Abstract
Knowledge about the dispersal and gene flow patterns in wild animals are important for our understanding of population ecology and the connectedness of populations. It is also important for management relating to disease control and the transmission of new and emerging diseases. Our study aimed to evaluate the genetic structuring among comparative samples of red foxes in a small part of Scandinavia and to estimate the gene flow and potential directionality in the movements of foxes using an optimized set of microsatellite markers. We compared genetic samples of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) from two areas in Sweden and two areas in Norway, including red fox samples from areas where the occurrence of the cyclophyllic tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis has been documented, and areas without known occurrence of the parasite. Our results show a high level of gene flow over considerable distances and substantiates migration from areas affected with E. multilocularis into Norway where the parasite is not yet detected. The results allow us to better understand the gene flow and directionality in the movement patterns of red foxes, which is important for wildlife management authorities regarding the spread of E. multilocularis.
Highlights
Dispersal is a key element that connects animals and populations through gene flow [1]
Apart from gaining new ecological knowledge, addressing information gaps about genetic structure, gene flow, and dispersal in red foxes is important for understanding putative disease transmission and epidemics
Genetic relationships among individuals and localities were analyzed in STRUCTURE 2.2.3 [43], revealing the most likely numbers of Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium clusters analyzed using an admixture model and correlated allele frequencies with 100,000 burn-in steps and 300,000 Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) iterations and 10 replicates for each of the runs for K populations = 1–10
Summary
Dispersal is a key element that connects animals and populations through gene flow [1]. The red fox is widely distributed, remarkably little information exists regarding the genetic structure and directional gene flow among populations at local and regional geographic scales (see Norén et al [7], for example). Their movement capacity has direct implications for population dynamics, range expansion, colonization, and disease spread [12]. Apart from gaining new ecological knowledge, addressing information gaps about genetic structure, gene flow, and dispersal in red foxes is important for understanding putative disease transmission and epidemics.
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