Abstract
Dogs Canis lupus familiaris are increasingly being used in wildlife conservation studies, due to their extensive ofactory capabilities. Dogs are a useful tool for species detection, species discrimination (or subspecies), and scent-matching of individuals within a species. Scent-matching can reduce or eliminate the need for expensive genotyping of obtained biological samples. We investigated the potential use of dogs to scent-match individual Eurasian beavers Castor fiber via anal gland secretion (AGS) samples, in 30 double blind floor platform experiments. We hypothesised that dogs can scent-match individual beavers when presented with AGS from different beavers of both sexes. We showed that dogs were able to scent-match individual beavers with average accuracy of 88.9%, sensitivity of 66.7% and specificity of 93.3%. Our results suggest that scent-matching dogs may be used as a reliable additional method to DNA analysing of biological samples to improve accuracy of individual beaver detection, and a better alternative than live-trapping/capturing in monitoring of specific beavers in e.g. a reintroduction project.
Highlights
BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research
We investigated the potential use of dogs to scent-match individual Eurasian beavers Castor fiber via anal gland secretion (AGS) samples, in 30 double blind floor platform experiments
Our results suggest that scent-matching dogs may be used as a reliable additional method to DNA analysing of biological samples to improve accuracy of individual beaver detection, and a better alternative than live-trapping/capturing in monitoring of specific beavers in e.g. a reintroduction project
Summary
BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. Our results suggest that scent-matching dogs may be used as a reliable additional method to DNA analysing of biological samples to improve accuracy of individual beaver detection, and a better alternative than live-trapping/capturing in monitoring of specific beavers in e.g. a reintroduction project. Due to their highly sensitive olfactory system, dogs Canis lupus familiaris have been used in a variety of scent-detection tasks for thousands of years, and their application has significantly increased during the latter years (Rosell 2018, DeMatteo et al 2019, Bennett et al 2020). The license permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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