Large carnivores were persecuted to near extinction during the last centuries, but have now recovered in some countries. It has been proposed earlier that the recovery of the Northern European brown bear is supported by migration from Russia. We tested this hypothesis by obtaining for the first time continuous sampling of the whole Finnish bear population, which is located centrally between the Russian and Scandinavian bear populations. The Finnish population is assumed to experience high gene flow from Russian Karelia. If so, no or a low degree of genetic differentiation between Finnish and Russian bears could be expected. We have genotyped bears extensively from all over Finland using 12 validated microsatellite markers and compared their genetic composition to bears from Russian Karelia, Sweden, and Norway. Our fine masked investigation identified two overlapping genetic clusters structured by isolation-by-distance in Finland (pairwise FST = 0.025). One cluster included Russian bears, and migration analyses showed a high number of migrants from Russia into Finland, providing evidence of eastern gene flow as an important driver during recovery. In comparison, both clusters excluded bears from Sweden and Norway, and we found no migrants from Finland in either country, indicating that eastern gene flow was probably not important for the population recovery in Scandinavia. Our analyses on different spatial scales suggest a continuous bear population in Finland and Russian Karelia, separated from Scandinavia.

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Noninvasively collected genetic data can be used to analyse large-scale connectivity patterns among populations of large predators without disturbing them, which may contribute to unravel the species' roles in natural ecosystems and their requirements for long-term survival. The demographic history of brown bears (Ursus arctos) in Northern Europe indicates several extinction and recolonization events, but little is known about present gene flow between populations of the east and west. We used 12 validated microsatellite markers to analyse 1580 hair and faecal samples collected during six consecutive years (2005-2010) in the Pasvik Valley at 70°N on the border of Norway, Finland and Russia. Our results showed an overall high correlation between the annual estimates of population size (N(c) ), density (D), effective size (N(e) ) and N(e) /N(c) ratio. Furthermore, we observed a genetic heterogeneity of ∼0.8 and high N(e) /N(c) ratios of ∼0.6, which suggests gene flow from the east. Thus, we expanded the population genetic study to include Karelia (Russia, Finland), Västerbotten (Sweden) and Troms (Norway) (477 individuals in total) and detected four distinct genetic clusters with low migration rates among the regions. More specifically, we found that differentiation was relatively low from the Pasvik Valley towards the south and east, whereas, in contrast, moderately high pairwise F(ST) values (0.91-0.12) were detected between the east and the west. Our results indicate ongoing limits to gene flow towards the west, and the existence of barriers to migration between eastern and western brown bear populations in Northern Europe.

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