“…Since it is simple, rapid, and cost-effective in contrast to DNA sequencing, it is also suitable 1 for species identification. Various methods using a species-specific qPCR assay have been reported for the identification of vertebrates such as fish (Terio et al, 2010;Hird et al, 2012;Hulley, Tharmalingam, Zarnke, & Boreham, 2019;Watanabe, Minegishi, Yoshinaga, Aoyama, & Tsukamoto, 2004;Taylor, Fox, Rico, & Rico, 2002), birds (Rojas et al, 2010;Natonek-Wiśniewska, Krzyścin, & Bugno-Poniewierska, 2019;Kesmen, Yetiman, Sahin, & Yetim, 2012), and mammals (Ji, Bai, Ji, & Yang, 2011;Wozney & Wilson, 2012;O'Neill et al, 2013;Knapp, Umhang, Poulle, & Millon, 2016). Probe-based qPCR assays are especially sensitive and specific, and can detect even tiny amounts of target species DNA with high reliability.…”