Mammals: Conservation

(asked on 1st September 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to Government grants statistics 2020 to 2021, published on 31 March 2022, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the eDNA Validation for Rare/Elusive Mammals Grant.


Answered by
Trudy Harrison Portrait
Trudy Harrison
This question was answered on 11th September 2023

The aim of this grant was to compare the effectiveness of different environmental DNA (eDNA) approaches for detecting rare (i.e. low density) or elusive species of mammals. The approach used was to compare the effectiveness of metabarcoding studies (which provide multi-species detection) with that of single-species approaches (i.e. Droplet Digital PCR) as survey techniques for otters and water shrew. The key finding was that single-species approaches worked better for both species, demonstrating that species-specific approaches may be most effective for detecting rare or elusive species.

The results have improved our ability to select appropriate eDNA survey techniques for mammals, and the knowledge gained from this grant has already been applied to further surveys such as the otter survey of England, which has just been completed. Natural England is also looking to replicate these techniques with other elusive species such as the invasive American mink.

Reticulating Splines