Xunhe Huang, Xiaoping Zhou, Qingxian Lin, Wenzhen Fang, Xiaolin Chen.Conservation Genet Resour, 2013. 5: 817-819..

Naturally molted feathers provide a valuabletissue resource for avian research. Here we present a convenientand accurate species identification method for thenaturally molted white feathers of six co-occurring Ardeidspecies, Egretta eulophotes, E. garzetta, Ardea alba,Bubulcus ibis, Mesophoyx intermedia and Ardeola bacchus,based on the polymerase chain reaction–restrictionfragment length polymorphism of the partial mitochondrialcytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. The resulting speciesspecificrestriction patterns are easily distinguished byagarose gel electrophoresis. In this study, 81 of 88 naturallymolted feathers noninvasively collected from heronries and139 plucked feathers were all successfully distinguished,while the 7 feathers that could not be successfully distinguishedby this method did not provide enough amplifiedproducts. This newly developed method for species identificationof molted feathers will be useful for furtherstudies on the vulnerable Chinese Egret and the other fiveco-occurring Ardeid species in East Asia.