Identification of novel bacterial biomarkers to detect bird scavenging by invasive rats

We found that the rat samples (n = 51: 28 fecals, 23 stomachs) we collected included rats that had consumed birds recently and rats that had not consumed bird recently. We identified 20 rat samples that contained bird DNA (n = 7 feces, n = 13 stomachs). We identified 11 rat samples that contained no bird DNA (n = 9 feces, n = 2 stomachs). We had 20 samples that we could not unambiguously confirm the presence or absence of bird DNA. Ambiguous samples were had either repeatedly low quality sequences, of mixed sequences or the sequence was of high quality, but matched a non-bird taxon (often earthworms and moths). All sequences and their associated data are provided here.