Genetic identification of endangered North African ungulates using noninvasive sampling

North African ungulates include several threatened and emblematic species, yet are poorly studied mainly due to their remoteness and elusiveness. Noninvasive sampling provides a useful approach to obtain ecological and genetic information essential to guide conservation actions. The very first and most important step in conservation planning is to accurately identify species, and molecular genetics has been proved to be a useful tool. Several molecular genetics protocols are available for species identification, even for samples with poor quality DNA, such as faeces, hairs or bones. Most of these protocols use mitochondrial DNA for barcoding despite this marker being especially prone to problems, including mtDNA introgression, nuclear insert copies, high intraspecific diversity or heteroplasmy. In this work, we developed a molecular method based on polymorphisms in small fragments of the mitochondrial cytochrome b (cytb, mtDNA) and the nuclear kappa casein genes (KCAS, nDNA) for identif...北非有蹄类动物包含多种受威胁且极具标志性的物种，但由于其生境偏远、生性机警难觅，相关研究仍较为匮乏。非侵入性采样是获取生态与遗传信息的有效手段，这些信息可为保护行动提供关键指导。保护规划中首要且至关重要的一步便是精准物种鉴定，而分子遗传学已被证实是行之有效的工具。目前已有多种分子遗传学实验方案可用于物种鉴定，即便针对DNA降解严重的样本（如粪便、毛发或骨骼）也同样适用。此类方案大多采用线粒体DNA（mitochondrial DNA）进行条形码编码，但该分子标记极易出现各类问题，包括线粒体DNA渐渗、核插入序列拷贝、较高的种内多样性以及异质性等。本研究开发了一种基于线粒体细胞色素b（mitochondrial cytochrome b, cytb, mtDNA）与细胞核κ-酪蛋白基因（nuclear kappa casein, KCAS, nDNA）小片段多态性的分子鉴定方法，用于……