Tiger diet in Ranthambore Tiger Reserve: how do metabarcoding and mechanical sorting compare?

Abstract

Accurately describing large carnivore diets is critical for understanding trophic interactions and identifying targeted conservation strategies. Most studies have relied on traditional dietary analysis based on mechanical sorting and identification of undigested prey remains, a method known to be error-prone and ecologically biased. Here, we compare the diet of tigers using non-invasively collected scats from Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in India, analysed using mechanical sorting and DNA metabarcoding. We found that DNA metabarcoding outperformed mechanical sorting in detecting higher overall prey and rare prey species occurrences, uncovering higher prey diversity. The study revealed that tigers were subsisting mainly on wild prey such as sambar and chital. However, domestic cattle contributed the highest relative prey biomass to their diet. Our findings demonstrate that DNA metabarcoding is an efficient, effective and powerful approach that overcomes several of the previously identified biases of the mechanical sorting approach and provides an accessible and particularly useful tool for carnivore dietary studies based on non-invasive samples. The increased frequency of livestock depredation relative to previous studies highlights the need for active mitigation measures to secure this population.