RapidRat: Development, validation and application of a genotyping-by-sequencing panel for rapid biosecurity and invasive species management

Invasive alien species (IAS) are among the main causes of global biodiversity loss. Invasive brown (Rattus norvegicus) and black (R. rattus) rats, in particular, are leading drivers of extinction on islands, especially in the case of seabirds where >50% of all extinctions have been attributed to rat predation. Eradication is the primary form of invasive rat management, yet this strategy has resulted in a ~10–38% failure rate on islands globally. Genetic tools can help inform IAS management, but such applications to date have been largely reactive, time-consuming, and costly. Here, we developed a Genotyping-in-Thousands by sequencing (GT-seq) panel for rapid species identification and population assignment of invasive brown and black rats (RapidRat) in Haida Gwaii, an archipelago comprising ~150 islands off the central coast of British Columbia, Canada. We constructed an optimized panel of 443 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using previously generated double-digest restriction-site associated DNA (ddRAD) genotypic data (27,686 SNPs) from brown (n = 295) and black rats (n = 241) sampled throughout Haida Gwaii. The informativeness of this panel for identifying individuals to species and island of origin was validated relative to the ddRAD results; in all comparisons, admixture coefficients and population assignments estimated using RapidRat were consistent. To demonstrate application, 20 individuals from novel invasions of three islands (Agglomerate, Hotspring, Ramsay) were genotyped using RapidRat, all of which were confidently assigned (>98.5% probability) to Faraday and Murchison Islands as putative source populations. These results indicated that a previous eradication on Hotspring Island was conducted at an inappropriate geographic scale; future management should expand the eradication unit to include neighboring islands to prevent re-invasion. Overall, we demonstrated that RapidRat is an effective tool for managing invasive rat populations in Haida Gwaii and provided a clear framework for GT-seq panel development for informing biodiversity conservation in other systems.