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Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population

BACKGROUND: Carnivores are re-establishing in many human-populated areas, where their presence is often contentious. Reaching consensus on management decisions is often hampered by a dispute over the size of the local carnivore population. Understanding the reproductive dynamics and individual movem...

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Autores principales: Granroth-Wilding, Hanna, Primmer, Craig, Lindqvist, Meri, Poutanen, Jenni, Thalmann, Olaf, Aspi, Jouni, Harmoinen, Jenni, Kojola, Ilpo, Laaksonen, Toni
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5738207/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29258497
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-017-0154-8
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author Granroth-Wilding, Hanna
Primmer, Craig
Lindqvist, Meri
Poutanen, Jenni
Thalmann, Olaf
Aspi, Jouni
Harmoinen, Jenni
Kojola, Ilpo
Laaksonen, Toni
author_facet Granroth-Wilding, Hanna
Primmer, Craig
Lindqvist, Meri
Poutanen, Jenni
Thalmann, Olaf
Aspi, Jouni
Harmoinen, Jenni
Kojola, Ilpo
Laaksonen, Toni
author_sort Granroth-Wilding, Hanna
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Carnivores are re-establishing in many human-populated areas, where their presence is often contentious. Reaching consensus on management decisions is often hampered by a dispute over the size of the local carnivore population. Understanding the reproductive dynamics and individual movements of the carnivores can provide support for management decisions, but individual-level information can be difficult to obtain from elusive, wide-ranging species. Non-invasive genetic sampling can yield such information, but makes subsequent reconstruction of population history challenging due to incomplete population coverage and error-prone data. Here, we combine a collaborative, volunteer-based sampling scheme with Bayesian pedigree reconstruction to describe the pack dynamics of an establishing grey wolf (Canis lupus) population in south-west Finland, where wolf breeding was recorded in 2006 for the first time in over a century. RESULTS: Using DNA extracted mainly from faeces collected since 2008, we identified 81 individual wolves and assigned credible full parentages to 70 of these and partial parentages to a further 9, revealing 7 breeding pairs. Individuals used a range of strategies to obtain breeding opportunities, including dispersal to established or new packs, long-distance migration and inheriting breeding roles. Gene flow occurred between all packs but inbreeding events were rare. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate that characterizing ongoing pack dynamics can provide detailed, locally-relevant insight into the ecology of contentious species such as the wolf. Involving various stakeholders in data collection makes these results more likely to be accepted as unbiased and hence reliable grounds for management decisions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12898-017-0154-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-57382072017-12-21 Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population Granroth-Wilding, Hanna Primmer, Craig Lindqvist, Meri Poutanen, Jenni Thalmann, Olaf Aspi, Jouni Harmoinen, Jenni Kojola, Ilpo Laaksonen, Toni BMC Ecol Research Article BACKGROUND: Carnivores are re-establishing in many human-populated areas, where their presence is often contentious. Reaching consensus on management decisions is often hampered by a dispute over the size of the local carnivore population. Understanding the reproductive dynamics and individual movements of the carnivores can provide support for management decisions, but individual-level information can be difficult to obtain from elusive, wide-ranging species. Non-invasive genetic sampling can yield such information, but makes subsequent reconstruction of population history challenging due to incomplete population coverage and error-prone data. Here, we combine a collaborative, volunteer-based sampling scheme with Bayesian pedigree reconstruction to describe the pack dynamics of an establishing grey wolf (Canis lupus) population in south-west Finland, where wolf breeding was recorded in 2006 for the first time in over a century. RESULTS: Using DNA extracted mainly from faeces collected since 2008, we identified 81 individual wolves and assigned credible full parentages to 70 of these and partial parentages to a further 9, revealing 7 breeding pairs. Individuals used a range of strategies to obtain breeding opportunities, including dispersal to established or new packs, long-distance migration and inheriting breeding roles. Gene flow occurred between all packs but inbreeding events were rare. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate that characterizing ongoing pack dynamics can provide detailed, locally-relevant insight into the ecology of contentious species such as the wolf. Involving various stakeholders in data collection makes these results more likely to be accepted as unbiased and hence reliable grounds for management decisions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12898-017-0154-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-12-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5738207/ /pubmed/29258497 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-017-0154-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Granroth-Wilding, Hanna
Primmer, Craig
Lindqvist, Meri
Poutanen, Jenni
Thalmann, Olaf
Aspi, Jouni
Harmoinen, Jenni
Kojola, Ilpo
Laaksonen, Toni
Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
title Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
title_full Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
title_fullStr Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
title_full_unstemmed Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
title_short Non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
title_sort non-invasive genetic monitoring involving citizen science enables reconstruction of current pack dynamics in a re-establishing wolf population
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5738207/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29258497
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-017-0154-8
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