Advancing seabird diet studies through buccal swabbing for DNA metabarcoding

Determining the diet of wide-ranging, pelagic seabirds is challenging.

In this study, we investigated whether buccal swabbing and DNA metabarcoding could be applied to DNA-based dietary analysis of northern fulmars and Manx shearwaters. We identified multiple fishery discard species in the diet of breeding fulmars while Manx shearwaters revealed an unexpected reliance on European sprat. Buccal swabbing for DNA metabarcoding proved a useful and minimally invasive technique for investigating the diet of two species of Procelllariiform. Read the full paper here.