Determining matrilineal kinship in natural populations of rodents using radionuclides

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
We have developed a technique that can accurately determine mother–offspring relatedness of voles in the field. Trapped pregnant females are injected with one or more gamma-emitting radionuclides and then released. The isotope concentration, while very low, is sufficiently high that young, when subsequently captured and counted in a very sensitive whole-body gamma spectroscope, can be clearly identified by the spectral characteristics of the nuclides used to tag the mother. Both laboratory and field studies have demonstrated that the eight nuclides used to date reach the developing fetuses across the placental barrier and the neonates via the mother's milk. The radionuclide technique has potential widespread application in the fields of ecology, population biology, and sociobiology.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: