Hello and welcome to this quick introduction to the dugong DNA project! We’re excited you’re here!

FAQ

Why are we doing this project?

We want to improve dugong management and conservation around Australia and learn more about these shy animals. Aerial surveys and satellite tagging studies are a great resource, but DNA can tell us about their migration, connectivity, and inbreeding in the long term.

Who are we?

The main contact person working on this project is Eva Paulus, the PhD candidate at JCU. Her supervisors are Jan Strugnell, Ira Cooke and Christophe Cleguer.

How can you help?

We want to opportunistically collect tissue samples from dugongs around Australia with a special focus on remote areas in WA and the NT. If you can help with this, e.g. if you have dugong meat in your freezer or have found a stranded dugong at a beach, let us know and we would be thankful for a small tissue sample!

How do you take tissue samples?

Here’s a short instruction video for anyone who has already received a sampling kit from us.

Here’s a quick overview in case the video doesn’t work:

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What do we do with the tissue samples?

After you collect a sample, please store it in a freezer (or fridge of a freezer is not available). As there are three replicates for each sample, you can keep either one or two of them yourself, and send one to me. Contact me for instructions on how to send samples or let me organize this for you! Once they’re at JCU, we will extract DNA from the samples in a laboratory and store the DNA extract until we’re ready to sequence the DNA.

We will send out a 6-monthly newsletter on the progress of this project soon!