New environmental DNA (eDNA) research may reveal new information about shorebird food sources and how climate change is impacting them.
A team of New England scientists, supported by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant (USFWS), are embarking on new research to discover which prey species–such as worms and shellfish–are sustaining a threatened and fast-declining population of shorebird: the Red Knot found along the western Atlantic, Calidris canutus rufa, sometimes simply called “rufa” for short.
What might normally require strenuous efforts to collect buckets of mud, sand, and silt from Red Knot feeding sites on Cape Cod will now only require small test tubes of environmental material. Genetic sequencing technology will do most of the heavy lifting through an analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA), a technique that pinpoints the genetic signatures of organisms within a field sample.
“We’ve observed the Red Knot’s estimated population numbers rapidly decreasing over their last three generations. To rise to the challenge of conserving this species, DNA sequencing technology will help us study their habitat and food sources faster than before,” says shorebird biologist Stephen Brown, the vice president of science at Manomet, Inc. “For us to turn things around for Red Knots, we must use the best available technologies to answer pressing questions about environmental changes facing this bird.”
Read full story on Manomet’s website.
Cover Photo: A mussel bed in Cape Cod, United States. Photo: Alan Kneidel.
