Use of Chromatography in Animal Ecology

The analysis of wild collected feces is a fundamental ecological tool, applied in studies about population size, diet analysis and to identify the presence of a species in a certain area. Moreover, it is useful when it is necessary to monitor those species which are elusive, difficult to observe, threatened, nocturnal or sympatric, or exist in low densities. The identification can be done by external physical characteristics such as size, shape, odor and color, or through specific signals associated with the deposition of feces, for example tracks and scrapes [1,2]. However, this technique is sometimes useless because of the difficulties that exist in the correct identification of feces. Often, this sort of evidence is not present mainly because many of these external characteristics are sensitive to environmental conditions such as heat, desiccation or fast decomposition in humid and rainy regions, and can be affected by another type of factors: health, diet, size and age of the individual [3, 4].