Making use of capuchins’ behavioral propensities to obtain hair samples for DNA analyses

Abstract

Genotyping wild and captive capuchins has become a priority and hair bulbs have high quality DNA. Here, we describe a method to non-invasively collect fresh-plucked strands of hair that exploits capuchins’ manual dexterity and propensity to grasp and extract food. The apparatus consists of a transparent tube baited with food. Its extraction requires the monkey to place its forearm in contact with double-sided tape applied on the inner surface of the tube entrance. The “tube” method, successfully implemented with captive (N=23) and wild (N=21) capuchins, allowed us to obtain hair bulbs from most indi- viduals and usable genomic DNA was extracted even from a single bulb.