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Old Orchard Trees Still Shaped Wild Boar Diets in Singapore

Wild boar standing in vegetation on Pulau Ubin, Singapore
Research · Ecology

Wild boar (Sus scrofa) in Singapore ate a wide range of natural foods, but DNA in their faeces also revealed a persistent dietary legacy from former plantations, orchards and villages. Wild boar disappeared from Singapore’s main island in the mid-twentieth century, recolonised naturally from the 1990s and are now abundant in forests where their main predators are absent, making food availability relevant to population management. A 2026 metabarcoding study detected cultivated plants including durian, rambutan, jackfruit, mango, pineapple and rice, alongside native plants and soil invertebrates.

Researchers analysed 61 faecal samples collected between 2019 and 2021 across five parts of Singapore. Thirty-five samples were collected opportunistically from fresh droppings and 26 were taken from animals handled through an official monitoring programme. DNA metabarcoding — which identifies food organisms by matching short DNA barcode sequences in faeces with reference sequences — was used to identify plant and animal dietary items. Bacterial sequences were also analysed to characterise the gut microbiome.

A broad diet retained traces of old cultivation

Plant DNA represented 96 families and 205 genera. Grasses and gingers occurred across all samples, while earthworms were among the commonly detected animal groups. The study also found DNA from cultivated plants that remain common in secondary forests created on former agricultural land. Durian was detected in all 61 samples, whereas rambutan and rubber were found less often but at geographically separated locations. DNA from mouse-deer and leopard cats was also detected; the authors say this could reflect predation on mouse-deer and scavenging of leopard-cat carrion, although the DNA evidence alone cannot reconstruct what happened.

Immediate land cover did not tell the whole dietary story

Relationships with surrounding forest and vegetation were mixed rather than absent. Plant diversity showed mostly weak or inconsistent associations, whereas the variety of animal DNA detected was higher around samples from areas with less forest and vegetation. Some differences in diet composition also weakened when the analysis was limited to opportunistically collected droppings, showing that collection method could influence the pattern. Gut-microbiome diversity and composition likewise showed no strong relationship with surrounding forest or vegetation.

The researchers instead highlight the persistence of formerly cultivated trees as one way historical land use can continue to influence food availability decades later. They suggest that managing remnant cultivated trees and access to other human-associated foods could eventually complement wild-boar management, but stress that the demographic contribution of these foods has not yet been quantified and may be minor or vary through time. Faecal metabarcoding also provides only a short-term dietary snapshot: some detections can reflect environmental contamination, and the place where a dropping is found may not be where the animal obtained its food.

Sources and image credit

  1. Ong, J. J. M., Khoo, M. D. Y., Tay, L. S., Lim, B. T. M., Marsh, C. J., Tan, M. A. S., Chiok, W. X., Png, G. K., Niissalo, M. A., Khew, G. S. W., Chua, M. A. H., Soh, M. C. K., Luskin, M. S., & Lim, J. Y. (2026). Land use legacies shape wild boar (Sus scrofa) diet along a forest-urban gradient in Singapore. Urban Ecosystems, 29, 168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-026-02032-1Primary peer-reviewed article published 5 June 2026. Researchers analysed 61 wild boar faecal samples from five regions of Singapore using DNA metabarcoding. Natural plant and invertebrate foods dominated, but cultivated species associated with former orchards and plantations were also detected; durian DNA occurred in all samples, while rambutan and rubber were less frequent. The authors found no strong, consistent relationship between surrounding vegetation cover and overall diet diversity or composition and describe faecal metabarcoding as a short-term dietary snapshot.

Image: JJ Harrison / Wikimedia Commons — wild boar on Pulau Ubin, Singapore, 22 January 2019; representative local image, not a study animal · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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