@article{e018158fed134369a234f00f545fa083,
title = "Using dietary metabarcoding analyses to characterise waterbirds–agriculture interactions",
abstract = "Globally, the use of agricultural fields by waterbirds has increased, resulting in conflicts with farmers. Designing effective management strategies to resolve these conflicts requires understanding the species' resource use. Dietary analyses can shed light on the extent of consumption of agricultural crops and surrounding natural resources, as well as the potential relationship between diet and an individual's body condition and ultimately its fitness. We examined the dietary composition of the tropical magpie goose Anseranas semipalmata, seasonally utilising a mixed natural-agricultural landscape of northern Australia. We used DNA metabarcoding of intestinal contents from hunted geese to reconstruct individual diets and evaluated body condition from morphometric measurements. We compared the relative contribution of agricultural and natural foods to dietary composition, and investigated how this contribution varied spatially, temporally and among individuals that differed in body condition. We found that geese consumed both agricultural and naturally occurring plants assigned to at least 35 taxa. The most frequent and abundant taxa belonged to three families: Poaceae (grasses), Cyperaceae (sedges) and Anacardiaceae (mangoes). Dietary composition varied substantially among sampling sites and over time but not with body condition of geese. Synthesis and applications. We used a novel approach to investigate the diet of a waterbird perceived as problematic across an agricultural landscape in tropical Australia. We showed that individuals forage opportunistically, and that agricultural crops, while eaten, may not represent an essential part of geese diet across the study region. The knowledge acquired provides new insights into the species' foraging ecology offering clear alternatives for mitigating goose–agriculture interactions. Providing disturbance-free alternative foraging areas or minimising the attractiveness of targeted agricultural fields (e.g. shorter grass, alternative ground cover) may alleviate crop consumption while benefiting the species' long-term conservation. While also highlighting the limitations of DNA metabarcoding, our dietary study emphasises the potential of this methodology to improve our understanding of crop damage by wildlife, allowing effective evaluation of management requirements.",
keywords = "agriculture, crop protection, diet analysis, DNA metabarcoding, geese, human-wildlife conflicts, rbcL, wildlife management",
author = "Am{\'e}lie Corriveau and Marcel Klaassen and Garnett, {Stephen T.} and Mirjam Kaestli and Power, {Matthew W.} and Mahsa Mousavi-Derazmahalleh and Coghlan, {Megan L.} and Keith Christian and Michael Bunce and Campbell, {Hamish A.}",
note = "Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the Traditional Owners across our study region. We thank the NT Government, NT Farmers Association, Australian Mango Industry Association, ECMU and TREND laboratories for supporting this research, private landholders, recreational hunters, Brett Ottley, Damien Stanioch and Dr. Cathy Shilton for assistance with specimen collection and dissection, and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, Australian Government and Government of Western Australia for bioinformatics resources. We are grateful to Prof. Philip Stephens, Dr Marc‐Andr{\'e} Villard, Brien H. Roberts and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. This study was funded by the Hort Innovation Mango Fund (MG15005) awarded to H.A.C. and Charles Darwin University. A.C. was supported by scholarships from the Australian Government Research Training Program and the Fonds de recherche du Qu{\'e}bec—Nature et technologies (FRQNT). Open access publishing facilitated by Charles Darwin University, as part of the Wiley ‐ Charles Darwin University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the Traditional Owners across our study region. We thank the NT Government, NT Farmers Association, Australian Mango Industry Association, ECMU and TREND laboratories for supporting this research, private landholders, recreational hunters, Brett Ottley, Damien Stanioch and Dr. Cathy Shilton for assistance with specimen collection and dissection, and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, Australian Government and Government of Western Australia for bioinformatics resources. We are grateful to Prof. Philip Stephens, Dr Marc-Andr{\'e} Villard, Brien H. Roberts and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. This study was funded by the Hort Innovation Mango Fund (MG15005) awarded to H.A.C. and Charles Darwin University. A.C. was supported by scholarships from the Australian Government Research Training Program and the Fonds de recherche du Qu{\'e}bec—Nature et technologies (FRQNT). Open access publishing facilitated by Charles Darwin University, as part of the Wiley - Charles Darwin University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Authors. Journal of Applied Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.",
year = "2022",
month = nov,
doi = "10.1111/1365-2664.14272",
language = "English",
volume = "59",
pages = "2756--2766",
journal = "Journal of Applied Ecology",
issn = "0021-8901",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "11",
}