Dalton, Desire Lee

de Bruyn, Marli

Kotze, Antoinette

Thompson, Tia

English

Poaching of South African wildlife is considered a threat to biodiversity. In the absence of diagnosticmorphometric traits, DNA barcoding is considered as a method of choice for species identification. Here, wereport on forensic case work involving the illegal hunting of antelope species. Three forensic cases whichincluded confiscated material were submitted between 2018 and 2019 and for species identification. Laboratoryprocedures including DNA extraction and sequencing of cytochrome c oxidase 1 (COI) and cytochrome b (cytb)were conducted following forensic procedures to determine species identification. Generated sequences matchedto reference sequences on the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the Barcode of Life DataSystems (BOLD) to impala (Aepyceros melampus, 99.4–99.7 % homology), eland (Tragelaphus oryx, 99.8–100 %homology) and kudu (T. strepsiceros, 99.6–99.7 % homology). Phylogenetic analysis and intra- and interspeciesdistance further confirmed species identification with high bootstrap support (96–100 %). Average intraspeciessequence divergence was 0–1.15% and pairwise comparisons between taxa satisfied the 10-fold genetic distance.Thus both COI and cytb barcoding genes are suitable methodologies for forensic identification of species in thecases presented here. However, analysis of the reference samples identified species where barcoding maypotentially fail. These include taxa that have undergone recent, rapid radiations resulting in high intraspeciesdistance or species that can hybridize. We thus recommend in these cases a reference database that includesgeographically widespread samples is required and analysis with additional mitochondrial and/or nuclearmarkers

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Assessing the utility of DNA barcoding in wildlife forensic cases involving South African antelope

https://research.tees.ac.uk/files/35734375/1_s2.0_S2665910720300177_main_1_.pdf

Assessing the utility of DNA barcoding in wildlife forensic cases involving South African antelope

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