Genetic Diversity of Wisent Bison bonasus Based on STR Loci Analyzed in a Large Set of Samples

Abstract

Wisent Bison bonasus is an example of a species saved from extinction and reintroduced into nature after a few decades of captive breeding. There were only twelve founders of the Lowland–Caucasian line (LC) and even fewer (seven out of twelve) of Lowland (LB) animals. The genetic diversity in studies based on pedigree or markers is very low. In this paper, we present a summary of the long-term genetic monitoring conducted for the worldwide population of European bison. We summarized the long-term genetic monitoring studies conducted on the worldwide population of wisents to date. We genotyped 2227 wisents from two genetic lines (LC and LB) and different populations at ten microsatellite loci. We found low polymorphism, with only 2.7 alleles per locus, and much lower values of observed heterozygosity (0.380 and 0.348 in the LC and LB lines, respectively) than expected heterozygosity. The difference between the lines is only noticeable in allele proportions, so the number of markers is not enough to distinguish the two genetic lines. We also present the genetic distance among four free-roaming populations that are geographically close to each other. We found that the genetic distance of one of them is larger than that of the others, which could be the effect of genetic drift.

Population ecology and genetic study of gaur (Bos gaurus) in a small protected area in Thailand

“…The samples from another study were from a zoo. The comparison of our findings with other studies in India, differ partly in the number of samples, number of microsatellite loci and markers, but are useful information (Olech et al 2023). The genetic diversity of threatened species is mostly lower than that of non-threatened species (Willoughby et al 2015).…”

“…The genetic diversity of threatened species is mostly lower than that of non-threatened species (Willoughby et al 2015). The genetic diversity of gaurs in KPM is not as low as that of concerned European bison (Bison bonasus Linnaeus, 1758) populations (Tokarska et al 2015;Olech et al 2023), and Far Eastern leopards (Panthera pardus subsp. orientalis Schlegel, 1857) (Sugimoto et al 2014).…”