Wolf population genetics in<scp>E</scp>urope: a systematic review, meta‐analysis and suggestions for conservation and management

Hindrikson, Maris; Remm, Jaanus; Pilot, Małgorzata; Godinho, Raquel; Strønen, Astrid Vik; Baltrūnaitė, Laima; Czarnomska, Sylwia D.; Leonard, Jennifer A.; Randi, Ettore; Nowak, Carsten; Åkesson, Mikael; López‐Bao, José Vicente; Álvares, Francisco; Llaneza, Luís; Echegaray, Jorge; Vilà, Carles; Ozoliņš, Jurijs; Ruņģis, Dainis; Aspi, Jouni; Paule, Ladislav; Skrbinšek, Tomaž; Saarma, Urmas

doi:10.1111/brv.12298

Cited by 146 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 172 publications

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“…Hindrikson et al. () showed that the genetic diversity of wolf populations in Europe could be influenced by other populations up to 850 km away, suggesting differentiation of the wolf populations at a large scale. However, our results show that the northern Iberian wolf population could display differentiation at very much smaller scales in line with observations of Finnish wolves (Aspi, Roininen, Ruokonen, Kojola, & Vilà, ; Aspi et al., ), which indicate average dispersal distances of about 100 km and significant population differentiation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the path to extinction: Inbreeding and admixture in a declining grey wolf population

et al. 2018

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Allee effects reduce the viability of small populations in many different ways, which act synergistically to lead populations towards extinction vortexes. The Sierra Morena wolf population, isolated in the south of the Iberian Peninsula and composed of just one or few packs for decades, represents a good example of how diverse threats act additively in very small populations. We sequenced the genome of one of the last wolves identified (and road-killed) in Sierra Morena and that of another wolf in the Iberian Wolf Captive Breeding Program and compared them with other wolf and dog genomes from around the world (including two previously published genome sequences from northern Iberian wolves). The results showed relatively low overall genetic diversity in Iberian wolves, but diverse population histories including past introgression of dog genes. The Sierra Morena wolf had an extraordinarily high level of inbreeding and long runs of homozygosity, resulting from the long isolation. In addition, about one-third of the genome was of dog origin. Despite the introgression of dog genes, heterozygosity remained low because of continued inbreeding after several hybridization events. The results thus illustrate the case of a small and isolated wolf population where the low population density may have favoured hybridization and introgression of dog alleles, but continued inbreeding may have resulted in large chromosomal fragments of wolf origin completely disappearing from the population, and being replaced by chromosomal fragments of dog origin. The latest population surveys suggest that this population may have gone extinct.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the path to extinction: Inbreeding and admixture in a declining grey wolf population

et al. 2018

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“…To date, only shallow regional genetic structure has been detected among several mammal species occurring across northern Eurasia (e.g. Hindrikson et al., ; Korsten et al., ). However, that emerging picture is by no means definitive, as these comparisons were made using relatively short mitochondrial sequences (Davison et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large‐scale migrations of brown bears in Eurasia and to North America during the Late Pleistocene

Anijalg

Davison

et al. 2017

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Climatic changes during the Late Pleistocene had major impacts on populations of plant and animal species. Brown bears and other large mammals are likely to have experienced analogous ecological pressures and phylogeographical processes. Here, we address several unresolved issues regarding the Late Pleistocene demography of brown bears: (1) the putative locations of refugia; (2) the direction of migrations across Eurasia and into North America; and (3) parallels with the demographic histories of other wild mammals and modern humans. Location Eurasia and North America. Methods We sequenced 110 complete mitochondrial genomes from Eurasian brown bears and combined these with published sequences from 138 brown bears and 33 polar bears. We used a Bayesian approach to obtain a joint estimate of the phylogeny and evolutionary divergence times. The inferred mutation rate was compared with estimates obtained using two additional methods. Results Bayesian phylogenetic analysis identified seven clades of brown bears, with most individuals belonging to a very large Holarctic clade. Bears from the widespread clade 3a1, which has a distribution from Europe across Asia to Alaska, shared a common ancestor about 45,000 years ago. Main conclusions We suggest that the Altai‐Sayan region and Beringia were important Late Pleistocene refuge areas for brown bears and propose large‐scale migration scenarios for bears in Eurasia and to North America. We also argue that brown bears and modern humans experienced a demographic standstill in Beringia before colonizing North America.

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“…This is a case of anthropogenic hybridization (i.e., the interbreeding of individuals from genetically distinct populations due to human action; Allendorf et al., ) and is considered a major threat to wolf genomic integrity (Boitani, ). Therefore, accurately estimating the prevalence of hybrids in wolf populations is a priority to elaborate conservation strategies (Hindrickson et al, ). We show that in this case using naive prevalence as a proxy underestimates the prevalence of hybrids.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of hidden Markov capture–recapture models to estimate abundance in the presence of uncertainty: Application to the estimation of prevalence of hybrids in animal populations

Santostasi

Ciucci

Caniglia

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Estimating the relative abundance (prevalence) of different population segments is a key step in addressing fundamental research questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation. The raw percentage of individuals in the sample (naive prevalence) is generally used for this purpose, but it is likely to be subject to two main sources of bias. First, the detectability of individuals is ignored; second, classification errors may occur due to some inherent limits of the diagnostic methods. We developed a hidden Markov (also known as multievent) capture–recapture model to estimate prevalence in free‐ranging populations accounting for imperfect detectability and uncertainty in individual's classification. We carried out a simulation study to compare naive and model‐based estimates of prevalence and assess the performance of our model under different sampling scenarios. We then illustrate our method with a real‐world case study of estimating the prevalence of wolf (Canis lupus) and dog (Canis lupus familiaris) hybrids in a wolf population in northern Italy. We showed that the prevalence of hybrids could be estimated while accounting for both detectability and classification uncertainty. Model‐based prevalence consistently had better performance than naive prevalence in the presence of differential detectability and assignment probability and was unbiased for sampling scenarios with high detectability. We also showed that ignoring detectability and uncertainty in the wolf case study would lead to underestimating the prevalence of hybrids. Our results underline the importance of a model‐based approach to obtain unbiased estimates of prevalence of different population segments. Our model can be adapted to any taxa, and it can be used to estimate absolute abundance and prevalence in a variety of cases involving imperfect detection and uncertainty in classification of individuals (e.g., sex ratio, proportion of breeders, and prevalence of infected individuals).

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Wolf population genetics inEurope: a systematic review, meta‐analysis and suggestions for conservation and management

Cited by 146 publications

References 172 publications

On the path to extinction: Inbreeding and admixture in a declining grey wolf population

On the path to extinction: Inbreeding and admixture in a declining grey wolf population

Large‐scale migrations of brown bears in Eurasia and to North America during the Late Pleistocene

Use of hidden Markov capture–recapture models to estimate abundance in the presence of uncertainty: Application to the estimation of prevalence of hybrids in animal populations

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