Whole mitochondrial genome capture from fecal samples and museum-preserved specimens of the endangered Grauer's gorilla and eastern chimpanzee

We applied a target enrichment method to retrieve whole mitochondrial genomes from 65 museum specimens and 56 non-invasively collected fecal samples of two endangered great ape species, Grauer’s gorilla and the eastern chimpanzee. We show that the applied method is suitable for a wide range of sample types that differ in endogenous DNA content, increasing the proportion of target reads to over 300-fold. As previously shown for museum specimens, we demonstrate here that mitochondrial genome capture from field-collected fecal samples is a robust, and reliable approach for population-wide studies of non-model organisms.