Use of DNA metabarcoding of bird pellets in understanding raptor diet on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of China  

作　　者：Charlotte E.Hacker Brandon D.Hoenig Liji Wu Wei Cong Jingjing Yu Yunchuan Dai Ye Li Jia Li Yadong Xue Yu Zhang Yunrui Ji Hanning Cao Diqiang Li Yuguang Zhang Jan E.Janecka 

机构地区：[1]Research Institute of Forest Ecology,Environment and Protection,Chinese Academy of Forestry,and Key Laboratory of Biodiversity Protection of National Forestry and Grassland Administration,Beijing 100091,China [2]Department of Biological Sciences,Duquesne University,Pittsburgh,PA 15282,USA [3]Yanchiwan National Nature Reserve of Gansu Province,Subei 736300,China [4]Institute for Ecology and Environmental Resources,Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences,Chongqing 400020,China [5]The High School Affiliated to Renmin,University of China,Beijing 100872,China

出　　处：《Avian Research》2021年第3期296-306,共11页鸟类学研究（英文版）

基　　金：funded by the National Key Technology R&D Program of China(2019YFA0607103);Snow Leopard Conservancy(G1900014,G2000019);Cleveland Metroparks Zoo(G1800082);Panthera Corporation and The Andrew Sabin Family Foundation(G1900011,G2000017);Welfare Project of the National Scientific Research Institution(CAFYBB2019ZE003).

摘　　要：Background:Diet analysis is essential to understanding the functional role of large bird species in food webs.Mor-phological analysis of regurgitated bird pellet contents is time intensive and may underestimate biodiversity.DNA metabarcoding has the ability to circumvent these issues,but has yet to be done.Methods:We present a pilot study using DNA metabarcoding of MT-RNR1 and MT-CO1 markers to determine the species of origin and prey of 45 pellets collected in Qinghai and Gansu Provinces,China.Results:We detected four raptor species[Eurasian Eagle Owl(Bubo bubo),Saker Falcon(Falco cherrug),Steppe Eagle(Aquila nipalensis),and Upland Buzzard(Buteo hemilasius)]and 11 unique prey species across 10 families and 4 classes.Mammals were the greatest detected prey class with Plateau Pika(Ochotona curzoniae)being the most frequent.Observed Shannon’s and Simpson’s diversity for Upland Buzzard were 1.089 and 0.479,respectively,while expected values were 1.312±0.266 and 0.485±0.086.For Eurasian Eagle Owl,observed values were 1.202 and 0.565,while expected values were 1.502±0.340 and 0.580±0.114.Interspecific dietary niche partitioning between the two spe-cies was not detected.Conclusions:Our results demonstrate successful use of DNA metabarcoding for understanding diet via a novel noninvasive sample type to identify common and uncommon species.More work is needed to understand how raptor diets vary locally,and the mechanisms that enable exploitation of similar dietary resources.This approach has wide ranging applicability to other birds of prey,and demonstrates the power of using DNA metabarcoding to study species noninvasively.

关 键 词：AVIAN Eurasian Eagle Owl Molecular diet analysis Next-generation sequencing RAPTOR Saker Falcon Steppe Eagle Upland Buzzard 

分 类 号：Q958.1[生物学—动物学]