Wildlife forensic DNA evidence links a suspected vehicle to a fatal lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) collision in Misiones, Argentina.

Delfina Sotorres¹, Juan Manuel Diaz², Alan D Benitez Vortisch³, Victor Zemunich³, Javier Patzer³, Karen E DeMatteo⁴, Carina F Argüelles⁵

¹Grupo de Investigación en Genética Aplicada (GIGA), Instituto de Biología Subtropical (IBS), Universidad Nacional de Misiones - CONICET, Posadas, Argentina; Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (FCEN), Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución (DEGE), Buenos Aires, Argentina. Electronic address: delfina.sotorres@gmail.com.

²Ministerio de Ecología y Recursos Naturales Renovables (MEyRNR), Posadas, Argentina; Observatorio de Derecho Penal y Contravencional Ambiental, Facultad de Derecho y Ciencia Política, Universidad Católica de Santa Fe, Posadas, Argentina.

³Ministerio de Ecología y Recursos Naturales Renovables (MEyRNR), Posadas, Argentina.

⁴Grupo de Investigación en Genética Aplicada (GIGA), Instituto de Biología Subtropical (IBS), Universidad Nacional de Misiones - CONICET, Posadas, Argentina; Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA; WildCare Institute at the Saint Louis Zoo, St. Louis, USA.

⁵Grupo de Investigación en Genética Aplicada (GIGA), Instituto de Biología Subtropical (IBS), Universidad Nacional de Misiones - CONICET, Posadas, Argentina.

PubMed DOI

Abstract

Vehicle collisions are recognized as a major driver of biodiversity loss, particularly in road-dense landscapes, exceeding the impact of invasive species and wildlife trafficking. For large-bodied, slow-reproducing, and low-abundance species, such as the lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris), this threat can have major impacts. Here, we present a wildlife forensic investigation in Misiones, Argentina…

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