Wright, P. et al. Development of species-specific real-time PCR assays for the identification of five European Rhinolophus bats

The detection and monitoring of bat species using non-invasive sampling and molecular techniques has become increasingly popular in recent years. In Europe, these approaches have been applied to identify horseshoe bats of the genus Rhinolophus, which includes five species: R. hipposideros, R. ferrumequinum, R. euryale, R. mehelyi and R. blasii. While species-specific real-time PCR assays exist for R. ferrumequinum and R. hipposideros, no unified panel of real-time PCR assays currently enables the identification of all five European Rhinolophus species from non-invasively collected samples. Here, we developed five species-specific real-time PCR assays, each targeting interspecies nucleotide variation within the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene.