Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jordan CuffORCiD, Dr James Kitson, Professor Darren Evans
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2023.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Dietary metabarcoding has vastly improved our ability to analyse the diets of animals, but it is hampered by a plethora of technical limitations including potentially reduced data output due to the disproportionate amplification of the DNA of the focal predator, here termed ‘the predator problem’. We review the various methods commonly used to overcome this problem, from deeper sequencing to exclusion of predator DNA during PCR, and how they may interfere with increasingly common multi-predator-taxon studies. We suggest that multi-primer approaches with an emphasis on achieving both depth and breadth of prey detections may overcome the issue to some extent, although multi-taxon studies require further consideration, as highlighted by an empirical example. We also review several alternative methods for reducing the prevalence of predator DNA that are conceptually promising but require additional empirical examination. The predator problem is a key constraint on molecular dietary analyses but, through this synthesis, we hope to guide researchers in overcoming this in an effective and pragmatic way.
Author(s): Cuff JP, Kitson JJN, Hemprich-Bennett D, Tercel MPTG, Browett SS, Evans DM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Molecular Ecology Resources
Year: 2023
Volume: 23
Issue: 1
Pages: 41-51
Print publication date: 01/01/2023
Online publication date: 26/08/2022
Acceptance date: 24/08/2022
Date deposited: 30/08/2022
ISSN (print): 1755-098X
ISSN (electronic): 1755-0998
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13705
DOI: 10.1111/1755-0998.13705
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/a3ap-h880
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
