Wildlife-related crimes are the second most prevalent lawbreaking offense globally. This illicit trade encompasses hunting, breeding and trafficking. Besides diminishing many species and their habitats and ecosystems, hindering the economic development of local communities that depend on them, undermining the rule of law and financing terrorism, various cross-species transmissions (zoonoses) of pathogens, including COVID-19, can be attributed to wildlife crimes. Wildlife forensics applies interdisciplinary scientific analyses to support law enforcement in investigating wildlife crimes. Its main objectives are to identify the taxonomic species in question, determine if a crime has been committed, link a suspect to the crime and support the conviction and prosecution of the perpetrator. This article reviews wildlife crime and its implications, wildlife forensic science investigation, common forms of wildlife biological evidence, including DNA, wildlife DNA techniques and challenges in wildlife forensic genetics. The article also reviews the contributions of genetic markers such as short tandem repeat (STR) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers, which provide the probative genetic data representing the bulk of DNA evidence for solving wildlife crime. This review provides an overview of wildlife DNA databases, which are critical for searching and matching forensic DNA profiles and sequences and establishing how frequent forensic DNA profiles and sequences are in a particular population or geographic region. As such, this review will contain an in-depth analysis of the current status of wildlife forensic genetics, and it will be of general interest to wildlife and conservation biologists, law enforcement officers, and academics interested in combating crimes against wildlife using animal forensic DNA methods.

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评论：野生动物法医遗传学——生物证据、DNA 标记、分析方法和挑战

与野生动物相关的犯罪是全球第二大最常见的违法犯罪行为。这种非法贸易包括狩猎、繁殖和贩运。除了减少许多物种及其栖息地和生态系统、阻碍依赖它们的当地社区的经济发展、破坏法治和资助恐怖主义之外，包括 COVID-19 在内的各种病原体跨物种传播（人畜共患病）还可归因于野生动物犯罪。野生动物取证应用跨学科科学分析来支持执法部门调查野生动物犯罪。其主要目标是确定相关分类物种，确定是否存在犯罪，将嫌疑人与犯罪联系起来，并支持对犯罪者定罪和起诉。本文回顾了野生动物犯罪及其影响、野生动物法医学调查、野生动物生物证据的常见形式（包括 DNA）、野生动物 DNA 技术以及野生动物法医遗传学的挑战。文章还回顾了短串联重复序列 (STR) 和线粒体 DNA (mtDNA) 等遗传标记的贡献，这些标记为解决野生动物犯罪提供了代表大量 DNA 证据的证明性遗传数据。本综述概述了野生动物 DNA 数据库，这些数据库对于搜索和匹配法医 DNA 图谱和序列以及确定法医 DNA 图谱和序列在特定群体或地理区域中的出现频率至关重要。因此，这篇综述将对野生动物法医遗传学的现状进行深入分析，野生动物和保护生物学家、执法人员以及对利用动物法医 DNA 打击针对野生动物的犯罪感兴趣的学者将普遍感兴趣。方法。