Mosquito derived ingested DNA as a tool for monitoring terrestrial vertebrates within a peri-urban environment

Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate. Consequently, there is a pivotal need to determine the occurrences and distributions of threatened species. Monitoring and detection approaches are traditionally reliant on capture (traps and cameras), as well as observations. However, these approaches are time consuming and skewed towards the detection of large and/or common species. Invertebrate ingested DNA (iDNA) is being increasingly used as a novel approach for indirectly monitoring terrestrial vertebrates via their DNA in invertebrates with hematophagous, coprophagous or saprophagous feeding strategies. This study aimed to examine the vertebrate diversity which could be retrieved using mosquito derived iDNA in a peri-urban setting. Furthermore, the study also examined the influence of a human blocking primer and the application of multiple primers on the detection of the targeted taxa. Sampling was performed in Sydney, Australia, in a peri-urban environment adjacent to both ur..., , , # Mosquito derived ingested DNA (iDNA) as a tool for monitoring terrestrial vertebrates within a peri-urban environment

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7rr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x3ffbg7rr)

**Description of the data and file structure**

This data set comprises three different groups of data
\- FASTQ files generated from the sequencing of each library
\- Mapping files for each amplicon allowing sequenced reads to be demultiplexed and assigned to samples in OBITools
\- Clean data sets for each amplicon after being processed through OBITools and MetabaR

The FASTQ files originate from three libraries, the name of each library, corresponding files and the relevant amplicon sequenced in that library are as follows:

**CHI9961A1** - this library was sequenced on the Nextseq platform - this folder includes sequences from four lanes of sequencing denotated by L001, L002 etc. each lane has a corresponding R1 and R2 file relating to the bi-directional raw reads. The following ampl...