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.

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