A dung beetle moving a pellet of sifaka lemur dung in Madagascar Premaphotos/Alamy
Analysing DNA inside the guts of dung beetles could provide a useful way to monitor endangered lemur populations in Madagascar.
at the Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki and his colleagues captured dozens of beetles from three forests in central and northern Madagascar to determine what dung they were feeding on.
They collected four different species of dung beetle in small, baited pitfall traps, then euthanised and dissected them.
Using sequencing technology, the team members fished out all the bits of mammal DNA from…
