Noninvasive methods for collecting fresh hair tissue

Collecting genetic material noninvasively from mammals includes plucking fresh hair (Higuchi et al. 1988), collecting shed hair (Morin et al. 1993), and collecting fecal material (Hoss et al. 1992). The bulb at the end of a fresh hair provides high-quality DNA for amplification. Although shed hair is more accessible, it contains only a fraction of DNA isolated from fresh hair (Gagneux et al. 1997). Reliably amplifying DNA from fecal material can be difficult, because of DNA degradation (Golenberg et al. 1996), DNA concentration (Taberlet et al. 1996), or PCR-inhibiting compounds in the DNA extract (Constable et al. 1995). Here, we describe four novel, noninvasive methods of collecting fresh hairs from wild and captive mammals. In most cases, these methods can be used to target specific individuals, an advantage that is often absent when collecting shed hair.