DNA from feces was extracted using the QIAamp DNA Stool Mini Kit (Qiagen). We used 200 ll of feces RNALater slurry per extraction and followed the protocol from the manufacturer with the exception of the following steps: (1) we initially incubated the sample in buffer ASL for 30 min and (2) the amount of buffer AE used for the final elution was 75 ll. Extractions from blood samples were performed using the QIAmp DNA Micro Kit (Qiagen), following the manufacturer’s protocol for dried blood spots. To extract DNA from hair samples, we used the QIAmp DNA Investigator Kit (Qiagen). We used 2–3 hairs with bulbs per sample and followed the manufacturer’s suggested protocol.
For all but one extraction, we performed an initial long range
PCR amplification targeting a mitochondrial fragment of
6000 bp using the KOD Xtreme™ Hot Start DNA Polymerase⁄ kit. The 25 ll long-range PCR reactions incorporated 12.5 ll of 2 Xtreme Buffer, 5 ll of dNTPs (2 mM each), 0.5 ll each of the heavy and light strand primers (10 lM), 0.5 units of KOD Xtreme™ Hot