✦ LIBER ✦

Maintenance of high levels of allelic variation in spite of a severe bottleneck in population size: the brown bear (Ursus arctos) in the Western Carpathians

✍ Scribed by Günther B. Hartl; Pavel Hell

Publisher: Springer
Year: 1994
Tongue: English
Weight: 409 KB
Volume: 3
Category: Article
ISSN: 0960-3115
DOI: 10.1007/bf00115160

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✦ Synopsis

Genetic variation in an isolated brown bear population of the Western Carpathians was studied by electrophoretic analysis of 51 presumptive allozyme loci. In spite of a severe population bottleneck at the beginning of the 1930s (40 survivors), average heterozygosity (H = 5.3%) was within the range commonly found in mammals and the mean number of alleles per polymorphic locus (Ap = 3, over five polymorphic loci) was very high. Possible reasons for the maintenance of high allelic variation are discussed.