Skip to main content
PMC home page
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences logoLink to Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
. 2003 Jan 7;270(1510):91–97. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2002.2184

Rescue of a severely bottlenecked wolf (Canis lupus) population by a single immigrant.

Carles Vilà 1, Anna-Karin Sundqvist 1, Øystein Flagstad 1, Jennifer Seddon 1, Susanne Björnerfeldt 1, Ilpo Kojola 1, Adriano Casulli 1, Håkan Sand 1, Petter Wabakken 1, Hans Ellegren 1
PMCID: PMC1691214  PMID: 12590776

Abstract

The fragmentation of populations is an increasingly important problem in the conservation of endangered species. Under these conditions, rare migration events may have important effects for the rescue of small and inbred populations. However, the relevance of such migration events to genetically depauperate natural populations is not supported by empirical data. We show here that the genetic diversity of the severely bottlenecked and geographically isolated Scandinavian population of grey wolves (Canis lupus), founded by only two individuals, was recovered by the arrival of a single immigrant. Before the arrival of this immigrant, for several generations the population comprised only a single breeding pack, necessarily involving matings between close relatives and resulting in a subsequent decline in individual heterozygosity. With the arrival of just a single immigrant, there is evidence of increased heterozygosity, significant outbreeding (inbreeding avoidance), a rapid spread of new alleles and exponential population growth. Our results imply that even rare interpopulation migration can lead to the rescue and recovery of isolated and endangered natural populations.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (262.2 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Amos W., Wilmer J. W., Fullard K., Burg T. M., Croxall J. P., Bloch D., Coulson T. The influence of parental relatedness on reproductive success. Proc Biol Sci. 2001 Oct 7;268(1480):2021–2027. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2001.1751. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Ball S. J., Adams M., Possingham H. P., Keller M. A. The genetic contribution of single male immigrants to small, inbred populations: a laboratory study using Drosophila melanogaster. Heredity (Edinb) 2000 Jun;84(Pt 6):677–684. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2540.2000.00721.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Ceballos Gerardo, Ehrlich Paul R. Mammal population losses and the extinction crisis. Science. 2002 May 3;296(5569):904–907. doi: 10.1126/science.1069349. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Computer software for performing likelihood tests of pedigree relationship using genetic markers. Mol Ecol. 1999 Jul;8(7):1231–1234. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1999.00664.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Ebert Dieter, Haag Christoph, Kirkpatrick Mark, Riek Myriam, Hottinger Jurgen W., Pajunen V. Ilmari. A selective advantage to immigrant genes in a Daphnia metapopulation. Science. 2002 Jan 18;295(5554):485–488. doi: 10.1126/science.1067485. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Ellegren H. Inbreeding and relatedness in Scandinavian grey wolves Canis lupus. Hereditas. 1999;130(3):239–244. doi: 10.1111/j.1601-5223.1999.00239.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Ellegren H., Savolainen P., Rosén B. The genetical history of an isolated population of the endangered grey wolf Canis lupus: a study of nuclear and mitochondrial polymorphisms. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1996 Dec 29;351(1348):1661–1669. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1996.0148. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Francisco L. V., Langston A. A., Mellersh C. S., Neal C. L., Ostrander E. A. A class of highly polymorphic tetranucleotide repeats for canine genetic mapping. Mamm Genome. 1996 May;7(5):359–362. doi: 10.1007/s003359900104. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Frankham R. Conservation genetics. Annu Rev Genet. 1995;29:305–327. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ge.29.120195.001513. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Higgins K., Lynch M. Metapopulation extinction caused by mutation accumulation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Feb 20;98(5):2928–2933. doi: 10.1073/pnas.031358898. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Hofreiter M., Serre D., Poinar H. N., Kuch M., Päbo S. Ancient DNA. Nat Rev Genet. 2001 May;2(5):353–359. doi: 10.1038/35072071. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Ingvarsson P. K., Whitlock M. C. Heterosis increases the effective migration rate. Proc Biol Sci. 2000 Jul 7;267(1450):1321–1326. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2000.1145. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Keller L. F., Arcese P., Smith J. N., Hochachka W. M., Stearns S. C. Selection against inbred song sparrows during a natural population bottleneck. Nature. 1994 Nov 24;372(6504):356–357. doi: 10.1038/372356a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Nei M. Estimation of average heterozygosity and genetic distance from a small number of individuals. Genetics. 1978 Jul;89(3):583–590. doi: 10.1093/genetics/89.3.583. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Ostrander E. A., Sprague G. F., Jr, Rine J. Identification and characterization of dinucleotide repeat (CA)n markers for genetic mapping in dog. Genomics. 1993 Apr;16(1):207–213. doi: 10.1006/geno.1993.1160. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. Pritchard J. K., Stephens M., Donnelly P. Inference of population structure using multilocus genotype data. Genetics. 2000 Jun;155(2):945–959. doi: 10.1093/genetics/155.2.945. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  17. Saccheri Ilik J., Brakefield Paul M. Rapid spread of immigrant genomes into inbred populations. Proc Biol Sci. 2002 May 22;269(1495):1073–1078. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2002.1963. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  18. Shibuya H., Collins B. K., Huang T. H., Johnson G. S. A polymorphic (AGGAAT)n tandem repeat in an intron of the canine von Willebrand factor gene. Anim Genet. 1994 Apr;25(2):122–122. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2052.1994.tb00094.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  19. Sundqvist A. K., Ellegren H., Olivier M., Vilà C. Y chromosome haplotyping in Scandinavian wolves (Canis lupus) based on microsatellite markers. Mol Ecol. 2001 Aug;10(8):1959–1966. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.2001.01326.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  20. Vila C, Amorim IR, Leonard JA, Posada D, Castroviejo J, Petrucci-Fonseca F, Crandall KA, Ellegren H, Wayne RK. Mitochondrial DNA phylogeography and population history of the grey wolf canis lupus. Mol Ecol. 1999 Dec;8(12):2089–2103. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-294x.1999.00825.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  21. Westemeier RL, Brawn JD, Simpson SA, Esker TL, Jansen RW, Walk JW, Kershner EL, Bouzat JL, Paige KN. Tracking the long-term decline and recovery of an isolated population . Science. 1998 Nov 27;282(5394):1695–1698. doi: 10.1126/science.282.5394.1695. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  22. Whitlock M. C., Ingvarsson P. K., Hatfield T. Local drift load and the heterosis of interconnected populations. Heredity (Edinb) 2000 Apr;84(Pt 4):452–457. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2540.2000.00693.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences are provided here courtesy of The Royal Society

RESOURCES