A Noninvasive Hair Sampling Technique to Obtain High Quality DNA from Elusive Small Mammals

Abstract

Noninvasive genetic sampling approaches are becoming increasingly important to study wildlife populations. A number of studies have reported using noninvasive sampling techniques to investigate population genetics and demography of wild populations 1 . This approach has proven to be especially useful when dealing with rare or elusive species 2 . While a number of these methods have been developed to sample hair, feces and other biological material from carnivores and medium-sized mammals, they have largely remained untested in elusive small mammals. In this video, we present a novel, inexpensive and noninvasive hair snare targeted at an elusive small mammal, the American pika (Ochotona princeps). We describe the general set-up of the hair snare, which consists of strips of packing tape arranged in a web-like fashion and placed along travelling routes in the pikas' habitat. We illustrate the efficiency of the snare at collecting a large quantity of hair that can then be collected and brought back to the lab. We then demonstrate the use of the DNA IQ system (Promega) to isolate DNA and showcase the utility of this method to amplify commonly used molecular markers including nuclear microsatellites, amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs), mitochondrial sequences (800bp) as well as a molecular sexing marker. Overall, we demonstrate the utility of this novel noninvasive hair snare as a sampling technique for wildlife population biologists. We anticipate that this approach will be applicable to a variety of small mammals, opening up areas of investigation within natural populations, while minimizing impact to study organisms. Video LinkThe video component of this article can be found at https://www.jove.com/video/2791/ Protocol Hair snarePrior to setting up a snare, an ideal location has to be determined within the pika habitat or talus slope. This includes hay piles, which are vegetation caches that the animals collect in late summer as well as fresh scats found at latrine sites. Strips of packing tape (10-50cm in length) are rolled up to provide a 360° sticky surface and are arranged in a web-like manner to envelope the entrance to the pika's hay pile (Fig. 1) or latrine site. Depending on the configuration of the rocks, a piece of fishing line may be used to support the structure of the hair snare, but this is often not necessary when entrances are quite small (<30cm in diameter), a complete description of the use of fishing line can be found in Henry and Russello (2010) 3 . Hair snares are checked as often as possible, and hair samples deposited on the tape (Fig. 2) are then collected and labeled. Once transported back to the lab, hairs are removed from the sticky tape using sterile forceps and transferred into cryogenic tubes and stored at -20°C until further manipulation. Hair samples clustered together along a hair snare are considered to belong to a single individual, while samples clustered independently are assumed to belong to different individuals. In the latter case, the hair is then place...

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