Studying Ecosystems using DNA metabarcoding

The pilot project led by Saint Joseph University in Beirut in collaboration with Jouzour Loubnan aims to support the ecosystem’s restoration projects at the national level.
Knowing what each animal species eats and through which animal species each plant disperses its seed, is crucial to understand the structure and the dynamism of an ecosystem.

The analysis of food webs and the elucidation of species interactions facilitate the understanding of the ecosystem’s functioning and consequently allows restoring it.

Although ancient identification techniques such as trapping, visual analysis, and camera trapping methods require intensive work and often lack resolution, recent DNA-based approaches are potentially considered most accurate for species inventories and dietary studies.

DNA metabarcoding is a universal system based on a small fragment of DNA called “DNA barcodes” that allow species discrimination. It can be applied to multiple applications, including biodiversity monitoring, animal diet assessment, reconstruction of paleo communities, food authentication.

In our project, we used this multi-specific approach to identify Lebanese mammals and their diet throughout the year during the four seasons using a non-invasive sampling methodology based on scat analysis.

The results of our study are auspicious for Lebanon and the eastern Mediterranean region.
Since Lebanon’s biodiversity is endangered, the results will help managers elaborating restoration and conservation projects to promote wildlife and to protect endemic and threatened species.

The generated information could be used as a support tool for other ecosystems restoration and reference projects to restore degraded forests and to protect our country’s biodiversity.

This project is in collaboration with the Smithsonian institute in Washington DC.

Author: Liliane Boukhdoud – PhD Biodiversity Conservation Initiative – Lebanon Faculty of Science USJ - Jouzour Loubnan