Map of African Elephant Range
Shading indicates areas where African elephants live.
Click for full Alternative text. opens in new tabThe Crime Scene: Kaohsiung Harbor, Taiwan
Where in Africa Did the Tusks Come From?
The tusks were shipped from a port in Tanzania. Did they come from elephants in that country, or were they transported there from other parts of Africa?
In Case One you used DNA profiling with short tandem repeats (STRs) to match an ivory sample to a poached elephant. Here you will use the technique to track down where in Africa the ivory seized in Taiwan came from.
In Case One you were looking for a perfect match between the ivory and an individual. Here you will be looking for the presence or absence of alleles in the ivory sample across elephant populations.
You will use data from a reference map of genetic profiles of elephant populations that was built using DNA isolated from dung!
