The effect of reintroductions on the genetic varia

Authors: James K Bull Marco Heurich Alexander P Saveljev Krzysztof Schmidt Jörns Fickel Daniel W Förster

Publish Date: 2016/04/04

Volume: 17, Issue: 5, Pages: 1229-1234

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Abstract

Over the past ~40 years several attempts were made to reintroduce Eurasian lynx to suitable habitat within their former distribution range in Western Europe In general limited numbers of individuals have been released to establish new populations To evaluate the effects of reintroductions on the genetic status of lynx populations we used 12 microsatellite loci to study lynx populations in the Bohemian–Bavarian and Vosges–Palatinian forests Compared with autochthonous lynx populations these two reintroduced populations displayed reduced genetic diversity particularly the Vosges–Palatinian population Our genetic data provide further evidence to support the status of ‘endangered’ and ‘critically endangered’ for the Bohemian–Bavarian and Vosges–Palatinian populations respectively Regarding conservation management we highlight the need to limit poaching and advocate additional translocations to bolster genetic variabilityThe Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx Linnaeus 1758 is the largest European felid Historically it existed throughout most of continental and Scandinavian Europe—a distribution that was substantially reduced by direct persecution as well as loss of habitat and prey Breitenmoser 1998 Presently populations exist in Western Europe with too few individuals to be considered selfsustaining all of which were established through reintroduction efforts since the 1970s Arx et al 2009Due to their complexity logistical socioeconomic political reintroductions usually involve the translocation of only a small number of individuals not all of which will survive to become founders eg Vandel et al 2006 Thus genetic variation in reintroduced populations may be reduced compared with the source population Subsequent loss of variation through genetic drift compounded by inbreeding is to be expected in such small populations eg Fickel et al 2005 Poaching of lynx—a manifestation of the conflict between humans and lynx eg Andrén et al 2006 Breitenmoser and BreitenmoserWürsten 2008 Breitenmoser et al 2010 Lüchtrath and Schraml 2015—puts further strain on these genetically impoverished populations A reduction in fitness due to low genetic variation and/or inbreeding has not yet been documented for wild lynx but has been shown for captive lynx Laikre 1999 that suffer problems similar to reintroduced populations low diversity few founders inbreedingTo date only one study has published the genetic assessment of a reintroduced lynx population Dinaric population Sindičić et al 2013 The authors reported low genetic diversity and significant inbreeding and summarized their findings as “grim” This study contradicts a previous ‘demographic assessment’ of the same population—ie from the viewpoint of population size and distribution over time—which had reported this reintroduction as “successful” Arx et al 2009 Such assessment discrepancies illustrate the need for an evaluation of the genetic status of reintroduced lynx populations in order to set appropriate geneticsbased conservation goals Frankham et al 2010 and to provide an additional metric to monitor and to compare the development of reintroduced populationsa A map indicating the number and origin of lynx in study larger occurrences are indicated following IUCN red list data 2016 light grey for autochthonous populations dark grey for reintroduced populations blue and green for the Bohemian–Bavarian and Vosges–Palatinian populations respectively b An unrooted neighbourjoining tree based on the proportion of shared alleles 1−P S between multilocus microsatellite genotypes following Bowcock et al 1994 c The total number of alleles plotted against the total number of samples by locality The Bohemian–Bavarian and Vosges–Palatinian populations are highlighted in blue and green respectively The open blue circle represents the Bohemian–Bavarian population excluding one admixed individual see textThe Bohemian–Bavarian BB population was founded by ‘unofficial’ introduction of 5–10 lynx of mostly unknown origin to Bavaria in the early 1970s it included 3 + lynx from Slovakia Festetics 1980 Wölfl et al 2001 and later supplemented with individuals released on the Czech side of the BB Forest in 1982–1989 18 lynx from Slovakia Červený and Bufka 1996 The Vosges–Palatinian VP population was founded by 21 lynx released between 1983 and 1993 originating mostly from what are now Slovakia and the Czech Republic Vandel et al 2006

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