Fingle Dormice and the Latest DNA Research

This week is #DormouseWeek and the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) are asking for help to “raise awareness for one of Britain's most vulnerable and arguably, cutest, animals”. It is likely that social media will be busy with photos and tales about this furry friend of Fingle Woods. So, to mark this special week for dormice, I’ll let you know what has been going on in the woods.

The PTES recently published an online article entitled, “Using forensic survey methods to detect hazel dormice”. It was written by Victoria Priestley, a PhD student at Imperial College London. In it, she mentioned our dormouse footprint monitoring project at Fingle Woods, as we supplied her with many samples of paper inserts from the footprint tunnels in Halls Cleave to help with her research.

While footprint monitoring uses some simple technology; a strip of paper next to a sticky pad of charcoal located in a plastic tube, the ‘forensic’ method studied by Victoria uses the most advanced analysis of DNA and, comparing the two methods, it is interesting to see how they both stand up. Victoria had previously observed that rodents urinate freely in their environment and raptors are likely to see these urine trails in the Ultraviolet spectrum. Piecing together a trail of evidence, she found that tracking these urine drops could be done with a UV torch and “urine is more evident on pale surfaces” so the use of a white paper surface would be able to reveal the trail of small mammals. We sent her dozens of samples of Fingle Woods footprints on white tracking card and, this is where the forensic swabs and DNA investigator kit were used to extract DNA from the samples we sent to her for analysis.

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Further research showed that white paper inserts slid into standard dormouse nest tubes could pick up positive results in many more cases than just waiting for the dormice to build a nest. She explained, “Our field test showed that looking for hazel dormouse eDNA, instead of nests, was 12 times more efficient, taking into account the number of positive eDNA tubes and the number of survey days until detection”.

This reflects a similar result to the footprint tunnels at Fingle. They have been shown to be very sensitive to detecting dormice by the presence of footprints. If we had to wait for dormice to build a nest, we would have seen far fewer signs. As it is, from our 150 tunnels we regularly see 20 or more signs of footprints in a 2-week monitoring period, compared to only 1 or 2 nests over a season. This is a much quicker, simpler way to determine the presence of dormice

But, moving onto the next stage of research, Victoria explained that her analysis of the urine drops on the papers didn’t have a 100% match with the location of footprints. “We’ve been looking at whether every positive footprint sheet also results in a urine sample (it doesn’t) and whether any blank footprint sheets have urine spots, perhaps because the inkpads dried out or animals managed to bypass the ink”. We already know that small mammals can be quite acrobatic and will jump over any object they are wary of.

As both methods of monitoring for the presence of this vulnerable species have the advantage of being unintrusive into the lives of the dormice, they could both be very useful and much more sensitive than waiting for nests to be built, or for animals to appear. Personally, I recommend footprint tunnels to all ecologists, naturalists and dormouse monitors. With little cost, they produce good results.

As the first stage of the Bringing Fingle Woods Back to Life project comes to an end we can look back at the numerous positive experiences, habitats improved, people involved and partnerships developed. It has enriched the lives of many people and many wild species and, with this and other research projects underway, the connections with scientific research should become a regular fixture in the next stage of the restoration of Fingle Woods. Some of the ‘Dormouse Squad’ volunteers will be helping with the monitoring this week so keep an eye out for the latest results and photos.

by Matt Parkins

Follow PTES on Twitter People's Trust for Endangered Species (@PTES) / Twitter
Full PTES article can be read here Forensic methods to detect dormice - PTES