Breaking down scats: degradation of DNA from greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) faecal pellets
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Isolating DNA from scats (faeces) of threatened species is a valuable, non-invasive method for identifying individuals. To establish whether genotyping of greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) individuals from faecal pellets collected in the field can be useful for population monitoring, an understanding of the DNA degradation rates is necessary. To determine the relationship between time and degradation of bilby faecal DNA, and assess whether a two-step elution process during extraction results in better-quality DNA, faecal pellets were collected from captive individuals, maintained under seminatural conditions, then harvested at known periods. DNA was amplified from faecal pellets with a 99% success rate and error rates of less than 5% up to 14 days after deposition. The amplification rate decreases, and the rate of allelic dropout increases with time, but DNA can still be amplified at rates above 60% and error rates below 15% at 90–180 days. We found that a second elution step was unnecessary, with more DNA amplified over a longer period using the first eluate. Viable DNA exists on bilby faecal pellets for a long period after deposition, which is useful for obtaining genetic samples for population monitoring programs and studies on population genetics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".