Dung beetles aloft, heisted by animal-seeking detectives

Detectives who want to detect whether and which exotic animals are in the neighborhood can use flying dung beetles as tools. That’s the story Elizabeth Pennisi tells in an article in Science magazine called “Can’t find that rare leopard anywhere? Ask a dung beetle“. Here’s part of that true tale:

“the researchers rationalized that mammal poop should contain blood and other cells with DNA inside, and that some of this genetic material should survive intact when eaten. So they trapped airborne dung beetles in a Swaziland savanna by hanging up a transparent sheet and selected one individual from each of 10 species to dissect. Then they removed the insects’ pooped-filled guts and sequenced all the DNA they could find there. Finally, they matched those sequences to those in existing DNA databases to learn where the DNA came from. With just 10 beetles, they showed there were blue wildebeest, zebras, mice, cattle, goats, and even humans living nearby, they report this week on bioRxiv, a preprint archive.”

(Thanks to Dorge Lerma for bringing this to our attention.)