Article
Highly Successful Non-Invasive Collection of DNA from Wild Chimpanzees
PAN Africa News
(2000)
Abstract
In the last decade, field primatologists studying apes have worked hard to extract DNA from biological materials recovered non-invasively from their subjects. For Pan spp., hair, feces, and wadges have been the principal foci of investigation (1,2,3,4). These techniques yield new lines of evidence about individuals' reproductive choices, kinship and community lineage structure, and population genetics at the subspecies level for the chimpanzee. From a practical standpoint, however, the extent of successful recovery has sometimes been frustratingly low. Here we report on a recent field season (February - April 2000) at Mt. Assirik, Parc National Niokolo Koba, Senegal (5), where we studied the far West African subspecies of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus). One of the research aims was to examine chimpanzee diet via fecal analysis and to collect fecal samples for DNA extraction. Given our criteria for fecal collection (see below), we obtained 54 samples; of these, 98% (53 of 54) yielded chimpanzee DNA. In hopes that this success may help other field workers, we provide some specific details of collection procedures and laboratory analysis. See also Wasser et al. 1996 (6) for more details of the collection protocol used.Â
Disciplines
Publication Date
December, 2000
Publisher Statement
Copyright PAN Africa News 2000
Citation Information
Linda F. Marchant, Amanda Ensminger, Jill D. Pruetz and William C. McGrew. "Highly Successful Non-Invasive Collection of DNA from Wild Chimpanzees" PAN Africa News Vol. 7 Iss. 2 (2000) p. 20 - 21 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jill-pruetz/9/