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Characterizing invertebrate prey diets of songbirds using DNA metabarcoding: a non-invasive approach to understanding avian diets
Citation:
Smith, L., E. Waits, M. Etterson, Jonathan Haselman, A. Pesano, AND E. Pavlovic. Characterizing invertebrate prey diets of songbirds using DNA metabarcoding: a non-invasive approach to understanding avian diets. 2023 SETAC North America Fall Meeting, Louisville, KY, November 12 - 16, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
This research, will advance our understanding of food web dynamics and routes of exposure to PFAS in songbirds and ultimately inform food web exposure-models.
Description:
Monitoring studies indicate a wide variety of avian species are exposed to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of persistent chemicals that are known to cause reproductive toxicity. Some PFAS are known to bioaccumulate and bio-magnify, but the distribution of PFAS in avian dietary items is unknown. Traditionally, determining diets of insectivorous birds is invasive and challenging, relying on the use of ligatures on nestlings, obtaining stomach contents, or intercepting provisioning adults en route to feeding young. Advances in DNA analysis have allowed researchers to assign fine-scale taxonomic identity to a range of biological materials. We have developed a high resolution, non-invasive method to characterize prey diets of insectivorous birds using DNA metabarcoding of dietary DNA (dDNA) obtained from fecal sacs discarded from nests. Multiple loci were evaluated for utility in characterizing nestling tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) and house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) dDNA. Two of these loci, representing a total of 403bp within the “barcode of life” COI mitochondrial gene, have been optimized to successfully amplify the songbirds dDNA. Metabarcoding of fecal sac dDNA and local aquatic eDNA generated thousands of arthropod OTUs representing 27 Orders and 862 arthropod species at 100% identity when referenced to NCBI DNA databases. This research, will advance our understanding of food web dynamics and routes of exposure to PFAS in songbirds and ultimately inform food web exposure-models.
URLs/Downloads:
https://www.setac.org/discover-events/global-meetings/setac-north-america-44th-annual-meeting.html