In a new study on DNA barcoding, researchers concluded that the process could be useful in assisting marine biologists in monitoring and correctly identifying species affected in marine mammal strandings.

The goal of the study was to determine if DNA barcoding could be helpful to marine mammal researchers in identifying stranded animals which were too decomposed to be readily identified.

They concluded that it was indeed helpful.

“Monitoring marine mammal biodiversity is often difficult to perform,” a researcher said in a news release. “If some species can be easily observed, others are more difficult to detect, because for instance, of their scarcity or their discrete behavior. One of the solution suggested by scientists is based on the organization of stranding networks, listing and recording marine mammal strandings, which represent a cost-effective means to follow the marine mammal biodiversity.”

In the study, researchers examined the marine mammal strandings that occurred from 2003 to 2012 along the coastline of Brittany, which is located North West of France. They learned that there were 1,530 marine mammal strandings, of which more than 16 percent which were not characterized on the species level due to advanced decomposition.

They demonstrated that DNA barcoding led to the correct identification of the species with no exceptions, even when the samples came from a specimen in “a highly degraded body state.”

Furthermore, the study concluded that the routine use of DNA barcoding could decrease the proportion of the previously unidentifiable animals– which represented 16 percent of the marine mammals stranded from 2003 to 2012.

The study, titled DNA barcoding: a practical tool for fundamental and applied biodiversity research, was published in a special issue of Zookeys.

“A long term use of the barcoding approach would therefore clearly increase the significance and the precision of marine mammal stranding monitoring,” researchers wrote in the study. “Migration or movement of populations of a particular species can be highlighted, thus revealing e.g. environmental changes leading to these movements.”