Survival and divergence in a small group: The extraordinary genomic history of the endangered Apennine brown bear stragglers

Andrea Benazzo (1) , Emiliano Trucchi (2) , James Cahill , Pierpaolo Maisano Delser (3) , Stefano Mona (4) , Matteo Fumagalli (5) , Lynsey Bunnefeld , Luca Cornetti (6, 7) , Silvia Ghirotto (1) , Matteo Girardi (8) , Lino Ometto (9) , Alex Panziera (10) , Omar Rota-Stabelli (11) , Enrico Zanetti , Alexandros Karamanlidis , Claudio Groff , Ladislav Paule (12) , Leonardo Gentile , Carles Vilà , Saverio Vicario (13) , Luigi Boitani , Ludovic Orlando , Silvia Fuselli , Cristiano Vernesi , Beth Shapiro , Paolo Ciucci , Giorgio Bertorelle

1 Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology
2 CEES - Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis
3 ISYEB - Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité
4 ISYEB - Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité
5 UCL-GEE - Dept of Genetics, Evolution and Environment [London]
6 Fondazione Edmund Mach - Functional genomics
7 UniFE - Università degli Studi di Ferrara = University of Ferrara
8 FEM - Fondazione Edmund Mach - Edmund Mach Foundation [Italie]
9 DBB UNIPV - Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie "Lazzaro Spallanzani" = Department of Biology and Biotechnology [Univ di Pavia]
10 Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione
11 University of Milano
12 Czech University of Life Science
13 CNR - National Research Council of Italy | Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Significance A small and relict population of brown bears lives in complete isolation in the Italian Apennine Mountains, providing a unique opportunity to study the impact of drift and selection on the genomes of a large endangered mammal and reconstruct the phenotypic consequences and the conservation implications of such evolutionary processes. The Apennine bear is highly inbred and harbors very low genomic variation. Several deleterious mutations have been accumulated by drift. We found evidence that this is a consequence of habitat fragmentation in the Neolithic, when human expansion and land clearance shrank its habitat, and that retention of variation at immune system and olfactory receptor genes as well as changes in diet and behavior prevented the extinction of the Apennine bear.

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie

Andrea Benazzo, Emiliano Trucchi, James Cahill, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, Stefano Mona, et al.. Survival and divergence in a small group: The extraordinary genomic history of the endangered Apennine brown bear stragglers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017, 114 (45), ⟨10.1073/pnas.1707279114⟩. ⟨hal-03923986⟩