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A Noninvasive Hair Sampling Technique to Obtain High Quality DNA from Elusive Small Mammals
Published on: March 13, 2011
Genomes of critically endangered saola are shaped by population structure and purging
Genís Garcia-Erill1, Shanlin Liu2, Minh Duc Le3
1Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Bioinformatics Research Centre, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Abstract:
The saola is one of the most elusive large mammals, standing at the brink of extinction. We constructed a reference genome and resequenced 26 saola individuals, confirming the saola as a basal member of the Bovini. Despite its small geographic range, we found that the saola is partitioned into two populations with high genetic differentiation (FST = 0.49). We estimate that these populations diverged and started declining 5,000-20,000 years ago, possibly due to climate changes and exacerbated by increasing human activities. The saola has long tracts without genomic diversity; however, most of these tracts are not shared by the two populations. Saolas carry a high genetic load, yet their gradual decline resulted in the purging of the most deleterious genetic variation. Finally, we find that combining the two populations, e.g., in an eventual captive breeding program, would mitigate the genetic load and increase the odds of species survival.
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