Inside This Extraordinary Living Lab

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Collaborators at the park are also using DNA meta barcoding, which allows scientists to collect fecal samples and sequence it to look at multiple taxa: the DNA of gut bacteria, worms, leftover animal parts, and other sundries. Excrement can be a rich source of information, including helping figure out which species is related to which—which correlates to another field of study in the park that is putting together a Map of Life to describe inter-species relationships. It also offers a noninvasive approach to figure out the population of a particular species that’s far less expensive than helicopter-based surveys. (View Highlight)