Long‐term monitoring using DNA sampling reveals the dire demographic status of the critically endangered Gobi bear

Tumendemberel, Odbayar; Tebbenkamp, Joel; Zedrosser, Andreas; Proctor, Michael F.; Blomberg, Erik J.; Morin, Dana J.; Rosell, Frank; Reynolds, Harry V.; Adams, Jennifer R.; Waits, Lisette P.

doi:10.1002/ecs2.3696

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Geographic isolation, possibly exacerbated by anthropogenic influences and adaptations to the different environmental conditions in the Gobi and Himalayas, may have played an important role in separating these lineages. The combination of restricted gene flow and small population sizes (Tumendemberel et al, 2021) likely increased genetic drift leading to low genetic diversity and further genetic differentiation. Previous research using microsatellites demonstrated that Gobi bears were the most divergent of all groups sampled in Central Asia (Tumendemberel et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We evaluated population structure using the LEA R package (Frichot & François, 2015) admixture analysis based on sparse nonnegative matrix factorization (snmf; Frichot et al, 2014) with 50 repeats for the full dataset and 10 repeats for the brown bears only dataset and principal component analysis (PCA) using Plink v1.90 (Chang et al, 2015). Results were visualized using the ggplot2 package (Wickham, 2016) in program R v.4.0 (Team R. C., 2017). We used spectacled bear as an outgroup to conduct phylogenetic analysis.…”

Section: Population Structure and Phylogenymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Range‐wide evolutionary relationships and historical demography of brown bears (Ursus arctos) revealed by whole‐genome sequencing of isolated central Asian populations

Tumendemberel,

Hendricks,

Hohenlohe

et al. 2023

Molecular Ecology

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Phylogeographic studies uncover hidden pathways of divergence and inform conservation. Brown bears (Ursus arctos) have one of the broadest distributions of all land mammals, ranging from Eurasia to North America, and are an important model for evolutionary studies. Although several whole genomes were available for individuals from North America, Europe and Asia, limited whole‐genome data were available from Central Asia, including the highly imperilled brown bears in the Gobi Desert. To fill this knowledge gap, we sequenced whole genomes from nine Asian brown bears from the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, Northern Mongolia and the Himalayas of Pakistan. We combined these data with published brown bear sequences from Europe, Asia and North America, as well as other bear species. Our goals were to determine the evolutionary relationships among brown bear populations worldwide, their genetic diversity and their historical demography. Our analyses revealed five major lineages of brown bears based on a filtered set of 684,081 single nucleotide polymorphisms. We found distinct evolutionary lineages of brown bears in the Gobi, Himalayas, northern Mongolia, Europe and North America. The lowest level of genetic diversity and the highest level of inbreeding were found in Pakistan, the Gobi Desert and Central Italy. Furthermore, the effective population size (Ne) for all brown bears decreased over the last 70,000 years. Our results confirm the genetic distinctiveness and ancient lineage of brown bear subspecies in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and the Himalayas of Pakistan and highlight their importance for conservation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%