Evaluating the use of non‐invasive hair sampling and ddRAD to characterize populations of endangered species: Application to a peripheral population of the European mink

The application of next‐generation sequencing (NGS) to non‐invasive samples is one of the most promising methods in conservation genomics, but these types of samples present significant challenges for NGS. The European mink (Mustela lutreola) is critically endangered throughout its range. However, important aspects such as census size and inbreeding remain still unknown in many populations, so it is crucial to develop new methods to monitor this species. In this work, we placed hair tubes along riverbanks in a border area of the Iberian population, which allowed the genetic identification of 76 European mink hair samples. We then applied a reduced representation genomic sequencing (ddRAD) technique to a subset of these samples to test whether we could extract sufficient genomic information from them. We show that several problems with the DNA, including contamination, fragmentation, oxidation, and possibly sample mixing, affected the samples. Using various bioinformatic techniques to re..., , , ### Title

Evaluating the use of non-invasive hair sampling and ddRAD to characterize populations of endangered species: Application to a peripheral population of the European mink

### Authors

Alfonso Balmori-de la Puente, Lidia Escoda, Angel Fernandez-Gonzalez, Daniel Menendez-Perez, Jorge Gonzalez-Esteban & Jose Castresana

### Description of the data

Two zipped files are included in this dataset. After unzipping, a sequence file in FASTQ format will be generated for each sample sequenced by ddRAD.

File 1: ddRAD\_reads\_tissues.zip
Description: Quality-filtered ddRAD reads for the tissue samples in FASTQ format
Files available after unzipping, corresponding to 15 tissue samples:
BC3179\_sample.fq.gz
BC3384\_sample.fq.gz
BC3388\_sample.fq.gz
BC3399\_sample.fq.gz
BC3407\_sample.fq.gz
BC3411\_sample.fq.gz
BC3429\_sample.fq.gz
BC3458\_sample.fq.gz
BC3460\_sample.fq.gz
BC3709\_sample.fq.gz
BC3717\_sample.fq.gz
BC3939\_sample.fq.gz
BC3973\_sample.fq.gz
BC4012\_sample.fq.gz
BC4310\_s...