TY - JOUR

T1 - Molecular dietary analyses of western capercaillies (Tetrao urogallus) reveal a diverse diet

AU - Chua, Physilia Ying Shi

AU - Lammers, Youri

AU - Menoni, Emmanuel

AU - Ekrem, Torbjørn

AU - Bohmann, Kristine

AU - Boessenkool, Sanne

AU - Alsos, Inger Greve

N1 - Funding Information: For generating the Illumina data, we would like to thank the staff at the Danish National High‐Throughput Sequencing Centre. We would like to extend our gratitude to Alex Crampton‐Platt (NatureMetrics), Arne Flor, Bjørn Morten Baardvik, Joy Coppes, Kat Bruce (NatureMetrics), Marc Montadert (France National agency for wildlife), Stein Nilsen, and Stephanie Witczak for providing relevant contact information, details about capercaillies, or contributing to the development of this work. For sample collection, we would like to thank the following group of people without whom this research would not have been possible; Alexandra Depraz (Groupe Tétras Jura), Bjørn‐Roar Hagen, Camilla Hjorth Scharff‐Olsen, Christophe Lhez, Hans Christian Pedersen, Kevin Foulché, Kristine Vesterdorf, Maria Ariza Salazar, Per Gustav Thingstad, Pål Fossland Moa, Stéphane Roche, Stian Rembjør Almstad, Torbjørn Alm, and Unni Bjerke Gamst. Additionally, we are grateful to Per Wegge and Françoise Preiss (Groupe Tétras Vosges) for invaluable inputs to the writing of this manuscript and for sample collection. This research is part of the H2020 MSCA‐ITN‐ETN Plant.ID network and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 765000. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Environmental DNA published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Conservation strategies centered around species habitat protection rely on species’ dietary information. One species at the focal point of conservation efforts is the herbivorous grouse, the western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), which is an indicator species for forest biodiversity conservation. Non-molecular means used to study their diet are time-consuming and at low taxonomic resolution. This delays the implementation of conservation strategies including resource protection due to uncertainty about its diet. Thus, limited knowledge on diet is hampering conservation efforts. Here, we use non-invasive environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding on DNA extracted from faces to present the first large-scale molecular dietary analysis of capercaillies. Facal samples were collected from seven populations located in Norway (Finnmark, Troms, Trøndelag, Innlandet) and France (Vosges, Jura, Pyrenees) (n = 172). We detected 122 plant taxa belonging to 46 plant families of which 37.7% of the detected taxa could be identified at species level. The average dietary richness of each sample was 7 ± 5 SD taxa. The most frequently occurring plant groups with the highest relative read abundance (RRA) were trees and dwarf shrubs, in particular, Pinus and Vaccinium myrtillus, respectively. There was a difference in dietary composition (RRA) between samples collected from the different locations (adonis pseudo F5,86 = 11.01, r2 = 0.17, p = 0.001) and seasons (adonis pseudo F2,03 = 0.64, r2 = 0.01, p = 0.036). Dietary composition also differed between sexes at each location (adonis pseudo F1,47 = 2.77, r2 = 0.04, p = 0.024), although not significant for all data combined. In total, 35 taxa (36.8% of taxa recorded) were new capercaillie food items compared with existing knowledge from non-molecular means. The non-invasive molecular dietary analysis applied in this study provides new ecological information of capercaillies’ diet, improving our understanding of adequate habitat required for their conservation.

AB - Conservation strategies centered around species habitat protection rely on species’ dietary information. One species at the focal point of conservation efforts is the herbivorous grouse, the western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), which is an indicator species for forest biodiversity conservation. Non-molecular means used to study their diet are time-consuming and at low taxonomic resolution. This delays the implementation of conservation strategies including resource protection due to uncertainty about its diet. Thus, limited knowledge on diet is hampering conservation efforts. Here, we use non-invasive environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding on DNA extracted from faces to present the first large-scale molecular dietary analysis of capercaillies. Facal samples were collected from seven populations located in Norway (Finnmark, Troms, Trøndelag, Innlandet) and France (Vosges, Jura, Pyrenees) (n = 172). We detected 122 plant taxa belonging to 46 plant families of which 37.7% of the detected taxa could be identified at species level. The average dietary richness of each sample was 7 ± 5 SD taxa. The most frequently occurring plant groups with the highest relative read abundance (RRA) were trees and dwarf shrubs, in particular, Pinus and Vaccinium myrtillus, respectively. There was a difference in dietary composition (RRA) between samples collected from the different locations (adonis pseudo F5,86 = 11.01, r2 = 0.17, p = 0.001) and seasons (adonis pseudo F2,03 = 0.64, r2 = 0.01, p = 0.036). Dietary composition also differed between sexes at each location (adonis pseudo F1,47 = 2.77, r2 = 0.04, p = 0.024), although not significant for all data combined. In total, 35 taxa (36.8% of taxa recorded) were new capercaillie food items compared with existing knowledge from non-molecular means. The non-invasive molecular dietary analysis applied in this study provides new ecological information of capercaillies’ diet, improving our understanding of adequate habitat required for their conservation.

KW - ecology

KW - environmental DNA

KW - grouse

KW - herbivory

KW - high-throughput sequencing

U2 - 10.1002/edn3.237

DO - 10.1002/edn3.237

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85109929894

VL - 3

SP - 1156

EP - 1171

JO - Environmental DNA

JF - Environmental DNA

SN - 2637-4943

IS - 6

ER -