African elephant conservation genetics II: A major advance in DNA technology

Genetic markers allow us to understand relatedness of elephant populations, and are essential to identify the provenance of confiscated illegal ivory.

Recent developments using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) show great promise in identifying geographic origin more reliably and economically than previous methods.

This project will refine the method for mapping DNA to source sites by analyzing the complete mitogenome of existing high quality samples, analyzing samples taken from ivory to determine specific provenance and analyzing more degraded samples from museum specimens for sites that are presently impossible to sample (i.e. warzones and sites where elephants are now rare or extirpated).

These mitogenomes will be used to will develop a system and conduct training to make this technique and technology accessible and usable in African range states and wherever seizures occur.