eDNA Metabarcoding- and Microscopic Analysis for Diet Determination in Waterfowl, a Comparative Study in Vejlerne, Denmark

Understanding diets and structural food webs are keys to the apprehension of ecological communities, upon which conservation and management biology are based. The understanding of grazing and habitat choice for waterfowl is one of the most important topics for avian ecologists today and can, to some...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology
Main Authors: Anna-Sofie Lützhøft Svendsen, Louise Bach Nielsen, Jakob Braüner Schmidt, Dan Bruhn, Line Holm Andersen, Cino Pertoldi
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023
Subjects:
eDNA metabarcoding
microscopy
waterfowl
diet determination
conservation biology
frequency of occurrence
Biology (General)
QH301-705.5
Anser brachyrhynchus
Barnacle goose
Branta leucopsis
Pink-footed Goose
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/biology12091272
https://doaj.org/article/4bf6259b7e894c77a3967deee0141b39
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Summary:Understanding diets and structural food webs are keys to the apprehension of ecological communities, upon which conservation and management biology are based. The understanding of grazing and habitat choice for waterfowl is one of the most important topics for avian ecologists today and can, to some degree, be answered by dietary analysis. Droppings collected from four waterfowl, the Eurasian wigeon ( Anas penelope ), Greylag goose ( Anser anser ), pink-footed goose ( Anser brachyrhynchus ) and Barnacle goose ( Branta leucopsis ) in Vejlerne (Denmark), were analysed microscopically and through eDNA metabarcoding with the use of next generation sequencing (NGS) to accumulate knowledge about the diet of these waterfowl. In total, 120 dropping samples were microscopically analysed, of which the eDNA metabarcoding analysis was done on 79 samples. The prey items were identified according to the taxonomic level of species, and a qualitative method, frequency of occurrence (FO) and FO calculated as a percentage, was used in order to compare the results from the two methods. As neither of the methods was able to encompass all species discovered when combining the two methods, it was concluded in this study that the two methods can support each other in a dietary analysis of waterfowl, but not replace one another.

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