Varsha Rai Chalise

Thank you so much for all the support 🥰

12.03.2025 10:05 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The web of life is intricately interconnected.

"It is our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.” - Sir David Attenborough

www.uwe.ac.uk/news/bat-study

12.03.2025 08:44 — 👍 65    🔁 26    💬 0    📌 1

So it is then when I was inspired to explore the world of molecular techniques.
Genetic tools such as DNA #metabarcoding, provide taxonomic resolution to the species level allowing for more efficient and comprehensive overview of species’ diet by detecting a wide range of prey species.

10.03.2025 17:12 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

But the method brings in a lot of bias because most of the prey items in feces are mostly or partially digested, leaving only hard-to-digest parts such as beetle 🪲 legs, wing parts, or antennae, etc. So the soft-bodied insect prey remain undetected using this traditional method of diet analysis.

10.03.2025 17:11 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

My interest in learning molecular methods sparked during my master’s thesis in Environmental Science in Nepal on bats supported by @batcon.org, when we teased apart bat feces with small pins under a microscope🔬to assess what they ate by trying to visually identify different insect parts.

10.03.2025 17:09 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Since it was my first time doing metabarcoding and I had no background in genetics or in any molecular methods, it took me sometime to wrap my head around even basic concepts of the method. I learnt and did things one step at a time. And finally, I made it ya’ll 🤩

10.03.2025 16:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Library pool in a 96-well plate ready for sequencing

Bat fecal DNA metabarcoding 🦇💩 🧬

Finally after four months of hard work in the lab at Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Gothenburg, my library pool is ready and has been queued for sequencing.

#dna #metabarcoding #eDNA #dietanalysis #batconservation

10.03.2025 16:53 — 👍 5    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0