ElePhant Database
Definition
A curated STR reference database for African savanna and forest elephants and Asian elephants, used to assign ivory to individual animals or to geographic populations.
- Database type
- Curated STR reference database
- Populations covered
- African savanna, forest, and Asian elephants
- Uses
- Individual and population assignment
- Sample type
- Ivory
Common questions
What is the difference between assigning ivory to an individual animal versus a population?+
Individual assignment matches a DNA profile from a tusk to a specific known animal, useful when comparing paired tusks or matching to a carcass, while population assignment estimates the likely source region using allele frequency patterns, which is possible even without a matching individual record.
Why does the database separate African forest and savanna elephants rather than treating them as one African population?+
The two are genetically and ecologically distinct groups with different allele frequency profiles, so treating them separately improves the accuracy of geographic origin assignment compared to pooling them into a single African reference set.
Related terms
- BOLD Systems
- Barcode of Life Data System (University of Guelph, Canada). Holds over 9 million COI reference barcodes linked to voucher specimens, with mandatory...
- COI (Cytochrome C Oxidase Subunit I)
- The 648 bp mitochondrial gene region proposed by Paul Hebert in 2003 as the universal barcode locus. Its combination of interspecific variation...
- DNA Barcode
- A short, standardised sequence from a defined locus used to identify a specimen to species by comparison against a curated reference library....
- Minibarcode
- A 100-200 bp sub-region of the COI locus amplified when DNA is too degraded for the full 648 bp amplicon. Shorter target...
- STR (Short Tandem Repeat)
- A genomic locus where a 2, 7 base-pair unit is repeated in tandem a variable number of times between individuals. The variation...