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- Kutschera, Verena E., et al.
(author)
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High genetic variability of vagrant polar bears illustrates importance of population connectivity in fragmented sea ice habitats
- 2016
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In: Animal Conservation. - : Wiley. - 1367-9430 .- 1469-1795. ; 19:4, s. 337-349
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and sea ice forecasts suggest that Arctic sea ice will decline markedly in coming decades. Expected effects on the entire ecosystem include a contraction of suitable polar bear habitat into one or few refugia. Such large-scale habitat decline and fragmentation could lead to reduced genetic diversity. Here we compare genetic variability of four vagrant polar bears that reached Iceland with that in recognized subpopulations from across the range, examining 23 autosomal microsatellites, mitochondrial control region sequences and Y-chromosomal markers. The vagrants' genotypes grouped with different genetic clusters and showed similar genetic variability at autosomal microsatellites (expected heterozygosity, allelic richness, and individual heterozygosity) as individuals in recognized subpopulations. Each vagrant carried a different mitochondrial haplotype. A likely route for polar bears to reach Iceland is via Fram Strait, a major gateway for the physical exportation of sea ice from the Arctic basin. Vagrant polar bears on Iceland likely originated from more than one recognized subpopulation, and may have been caught in sea ice export during long-distance movements to the East Greenland area. Although their potentially diverse geographic origins might suggest that these vagrants encompass much higher genetic variability than vagrants or dispersers in other regions, the four Icelandic vagrants encompassed similar genetic variability as any four randomly picked individuals from a single subpopulation or from the entire sample. We suggest that this is a consequence of the low overall genetic variability and weak range-wide genetic structuring of polar bears - few dispersers can represent a large portion of the species' gene pool. As predicted by theory and our demographic simulations, continued gene flow will be necessary to counteract loss of genetic variability in increasingly fragmented Arctic habitats. Similar considerations will be important in the management of other taxa that utilize sea ice habitats.
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| 3. |
- Ersmark, Erik, et al.
(author)
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From the Past to the Present : Wolf Phylogeography and Demographic History Based on the Mitochondrial Control Region
- 2016
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In: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. - : FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. - 2296-701X. ; 4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The global distribution of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) is a complex assembly consisting of a large number of populations and described subspecies. How these lineages are related to one another is still not fully resolved, largely due to the fact that large geographical regions remain poorly sampled both at the core and periphery of the species' range. Analyses of ancient wolves have also suffered from uneven sampling, but have shown indications of a major turnover at some point during the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary in northern North America. Here we analyze variation in the mitochondrial control region in 122 contemporary wolves from some of the less studied populations, as well as six samples from the previously unstudied Greenland subspecies (Canis I. orlon) and two Late Pleistocene samples from Siberia. Together with the publicly available control region sequences of both modern and ancient wolves, this study examines genetic diversity on a wide geographical and temporal scale that includes both Eurasia and North America. We identify 13 new haplotypes, of which the majority is found in northern and eastern Asia. The results show that the Greenland samples are all represented by one haplotype, previously identified in North American wolves, among which this population seems to trace its maternal lineage. The phylogeny and network analyses show a wide spatial distribution of several lineages, but also some clusters with more distinct geographical affiliation. In North America, we find support for an end-Pleistocene population bottleneck through coalescent simulations under an approximate Bayesian framework in contrast to previous studies that suggested an extinction-replacement event. However, we find no support for a similar bottleneck in Eurasia. Overall, this global analysis helps to clarify our understanding of the complex history for wolves in Eurasia and North America.
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| 4. |
- Hailer, F., et al.
(author)
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Response to comment on "Nuclear genomic sequences reveal that polar bears are an old and distinct bear lineage"
- 2013
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 340:6127, s. 1522-b
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nakagome et al. reanalyzed some of our data and assert that we cannot refute the mitochondrial DNA-based scenario for polar bear evolution. Their single-locus test statistic is strongly affected by introgression and incomplete lineage sorting, whereas our multilocus approaches are better suited to recover the true species relationships. Indeed, our sister-lineage model receives high support in a Bayesian model comparison.
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