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Identifying the raw material used by wild New Caledonian crows for manufacturing hooked stick tools: (A) New Caledonian crow holding a hooked stick tool manufactured from Desmanthus virgatus at site-2; (B) satellite photograph showing study sites on the west coast of Grande Terre, New Caledonia; (C) timeline of animal-centered approaches employed while attempting to identify the tool material used at site-3, with short explanations for their limited success; (D) timeline of the artifact-centered, DNA barcoding approach which ultimately led to successful material identification; (i) hooked stick tool recovered at site-3; (ii) Mimusops elengi trees, with close-up of a forked terminal branch, which would be suitable for tool manufacture; (iii) simplified maximum-likelihood ITS phylogenetic tree detailing clustering of tool samples and a subset of reference data; (iv) ‘refit’ of a hooked stick tool made from Mimusops elengi material by a temporarily captive crow from site-1: the tool is displayed along with stem and plant debris which were discarded by the crow during the manufacture process. Scale in mm. Image credit: Steele et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2020699118.

Scientists Use DNA Barcoding to Identify Tool Materials of New Caledonian Crows

Jul 27, 2021 by News Staff

Using a taxonomic method called DNA barcoding, researchers have identified, from just a few recovered tool specimens, the plant species New Caledonian...