Investigating the extent of genome erosion following fragmentation in the Fennoscandian arctic fox

Accelerating climate change is causing severe habitat fragmentation in the Arctic, threatening the persistence of many cold-adapted species. The Scandinavian arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) is highly fragmented, with a once continuous, circumpolar distribution, it struggled to recover from a se-vere demographic bottleneck in the late 19th century. The future persistence of the entire Scandi-navian population is highly dependent on the northernmost Fennoscandian subpopulations (Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula), which provide a link to the Siberian population. By analyz-ing 43 arctic fox genomes, we quantified genomic variation and inbreeding in these populations. Signatures of genome erosion increased from Siberia to northern Sweden indicating a stepping-stone model of connectivity. In northern Fennoscandia, runs of homozygosity (ROH) were on av-erage ~1.47-fold longer than ROH found in Siberia, stretching almost entire scaffolds. Moreover, consistent with recent inbreeding, northern Fennoscandia harbored more homozygous deleterious mutations, whereas Siberia had more in heterozygous state. This study underlines the value of documenting genome erosion following population fragmentation to identify areas requiring conservation priority. With the increasing fragmentation and isolation of Arctic habitats due to global warming, understanding the genomic and demographic consequences is vital for maintaining evolutionary potential and preventing local extinctions.

Identifier
Source https://data.blue-cloud.org/search-details?step=~012C4960B4A850A73CC5A84F62B4C8938CC01C6E353
Metadata Access https://data.blue-cloud.org/api/collections/C4960B4A850A73CC5A84F62B4C8938CC01C6E353
Provenance
Instrument Illumina MiSeq; Illumina NovaSeq 6000; Illumina HiSeq 4000; Illumina HiSeq X; ILLUMINA
Publisher Blue-Cloud Data Discovery & Access service; ELIXIR-ENA
Contributor Stockholm University
Publication Year 2024
OpenAccess true
Contact blue-cloud-support(at)maris.nl
Representation
Discipline Marine Science
Temporal Point 2022-10-31T00:00:00Z