Noninvasive molecular sexing: An evaluation and validation of the SRY‐ and amelogenin‐based method in three new lemur species

Many lemurspecies are arboreal, elusive, and/or nocturnal and are consequently difficult to approach, observe and catch. In addition, most of them are endangered. For these reasons, non-invasive sampling is especially useful in primates including lemurs. A key issue in conservation and ecological studiesis to identify the sexof the sampled individuals to investigate sex-biased dispersal, parentage, social organization and population sexratio. Several molecular tests of sexare available in apes and monkeys, but only a handful of them work in the lemuriform clade. Among these tests, the coamplification of the SRY gene with the amelogeninX gene using strepsirhine-specific X primers seems particularly promising, but the reliability and validity of this sexingtest have not been properly assessed yet. In this study, we (i) show that this molecular sexingtest works on three additional lemurspecies ( Microcebus tavaratra, Propithecus coronatus and P. verreauxi) from two previously untested genera and one previously untested family, suggesting that these markers are likely to be universal among lemursand other strepsirrhines; (ii) provide the first evidence that this PCR-based sexingtest works on degraded DNA obtained from noninvasive samples; (iii) validate the approach using a large number of known- sexindividuals and a multiple-tubes approach, and show that mismatches between the field sexand the final molecular consensus sexoccur in less than 10% of all the samples and that most of these mismatches were likely linked to incorrect sexdeterminations in the field rather than genotyping errors. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.