高通量测序技术在野生动物食性分析中的应用

食性研究是动物生态学颇受关注的一个重要内容,而食性分析方法由于受到技术和适用范围的限制,也在不断改进和更新。随着高通量测序技术的发展,该技术逐渐扩展到野生动物的食性分析,使食性分析的效率得到极大提升,并拓宽了食性分析的应用范围。尽管高通量测序应用于食性分析在数据量、灵敏度和分辨率方面的优势较为明显,但由于涉及到的步骤较多,受到的影响因素较为复杂,目前高通量测序应用于食性分析还属于研究比较薄弱的领域。概述了高通量测序技术应用于食性分析的基本流程,总结了该技术在食物组成分析、种内和种间食性关系、食物与栖息地、行为关系方面的研究动态,分析了PCR、污染和定量分析对该技术应用性的影响,提出了相应的解决对策和建议,并对其应用前景进行了展望。

The application of high-throughput sequencing technologies to wildlife diet analysis

Diet related studies are critical in animal ecology, and diet analysis methods have been continuously improved and updated due to technical and application limitations of the different methods. The high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technique is being used to investigate the diets of wildlife. This use has greatly improved the efficiency and broadened the range of its application to diet analysis. HTS has obvious advantages of improved dataset analysis, sensitivity, and resolution, but HTS-based diet analysis is still a weak research field because it involves many different steps and is influenced by complex factors. In this study, we summarize the general strategies adopted for diet analysis using HTS, review the current progress of this technique in analyzing diet components, and elucidate the intra-specific and inter-specific dietary relationship and the relationship between food resources and habitat and behavior. Then the influences of PCR bias, contamination, and quantitative analysis on accurate diet analysis are discussed. Ways to improve the technique are proposed, as are the prospects for the future application of this method.