Assessing Diet and Genotyping Success of Goat Pellet Surveys from 2019 in Glacier National Park
Scoresby SR, Dose LM, Belt J, Graves TA. 2025. Assessing Diet and Genotyping Success of Goat Pellet Surveys from 2019 in Glacier National Park. National Park Service. West Glacier, MT
Here, we use mountain goat fecal pellets to conduct 1) an evaluation of which conditions might influence genotyping success and 2) a preliminary assessment of diet using metabarcoding. This pilot study allowed us to evaluate which pellets to focus on collecting, identify the best storage methods, explore approaches for analyzing metabarcoding data, examine the utility of metabarcoding for acquiring taxonomically specific diet information, and to identify genetic sequences that could not be resolved to genus or species levels using these methods. We examined the frequency of occurrence and relative diet composition of identified forbs, shrubs, graminoids, mosses, and trees in mountain goat diets.