For years, scientists talked about the problem. They swapped stories of failed projects, came up with explanations and hinted at it in published studies. Only this May did a team of microbiome researchers finally publish a paper asking the question directly:
Why is it so hard to find DNA in bird poop?
“There’s all kinds of things you can do with feces, and mammalian feces work really well for these applications,” said Kevin Kohl, associate professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Biology and lead author of the study. “But bird feces seem to have this mysterious problem.”
And it is a problem. Scooping some poop and searching for DNA is perhaps the best way to glimpse the community of bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that live within an animal’s gut without disturbing it. That same fecal DNA can help identify what the animal has been eating, too.