Phylogeography and founder effect of the endangered Corsican red deer (Cervus elaphus corsicanus)

Abstract

Red deer (n = 149) from eight geographical locations, including the endangered endemic populations from the Tyrrhenian islands (Sardinia and Corsica), were analysed at eight polymorphic microsatellite loci. Two questions were addressed: (1) Is there a founder eVect in the Corsican population, which was reintroduced to the island using Sardinian deer after the species' extinction on Corsica? (2) What is the origin of the Tyrrhenian or Corsican red deer (Cervus elaphus corsicanus)? Our results showed signs of a founder eVect for the red deer on Corsica in that these deer showed diVerentiation from the Sardinian population as measured by F ST values, assignment tests (with and without a priori deWnition of populations) and individual-based dendrograms. Genetic variability, however, did not diVer signiWcantly between the two populations. With respect to the phylogeography of C. e. corsicanus we found that both deer from NorthAfrica and Mesola on the Italian mainland were genetically close to the Corsican red deer, but phylogenetic trees based on genetic distances were only poorly supported statistically. Among all populations studied the Mesola red deer showed the lowest distance values from Corsican red deer and yielded allele frequencies that were more similar to those of C. e. corsicanus than were those of North-African red deer. These results are in line with recent palaeontological and archaeozoological Wndings which suggest that the Corsican red deer is derived from small Italian red deer introduced from the mainland to

Spring spotlight counts provide reliable indices to track changes in population size of mountain‐dwelling red deer Cervus elaphus

“…Le teorie più accreditate, vista la completa mancanza di resti fossili, ipotizzano che la sua diffusione in Sardegna e Corsica possa essere spiegata con l'introduzione di soggetti provenienti dal Medio Oriente o dal Nordafrica avvenuta nell'ultimo periodo dell'età del bronzo (1200 -700 a. C.). Recenti indagini genetiche tuttavia propongono un'ipotesi filogeografica alternativa, supponendo un'origine italiana del Cervo sardo (Hmwe et al, 2006;, Hajji et al, 2008. Abbondante ed ampiamente diffuso su entrambe le isole fino all'inizio del XX secolo, subì in seguito una forte contrazione della distribuzione e della consistenza che portò all'estinzione della sottospecie dalla Corsica nel 1970 e alla riduzione dell'areale sardo in tre aree disgiunte e senza possibilità di interscambio di individui (Serrabus, Sulcis e Costa Verde).…”

Conservation Genetics and Phylogeography of the Threatened Corsican and Barbary Red Deer (Cervus elaphus corsicanus and C. e. barbarus)

“…In addition to these 10 animals, many more panicked during the capturing, jumped over the enclosure's fence and have not returned since. Hajji et al (2007) Apart from the inclusion of some African samples in phylogenetic or phylogeographic studies (Polziehn and Strobeck 2002;Ludt et al 2004;Hajji et al 2008) there has only been one genetic study of Barbary red deer. Hajji et al (2007) analysed 30 Tunisian Barbary red deer from El Feidja (n = 12), Ain Baccouch (n = 8) and Mhebès (n = 10).…”

“…Only a few females would be enough to have caused this mitochondrial pattern without significantly increasing nuclear genetic variability. We have recently analysed a panel of eight further microsatellite loci, which show the same picture with respect to variability (Hajji et al 2008), but also included 10 red deer from Corsica in our analysis. Genetic variability of the Corsican animals was still a little lower than that for Sardinia (observed and expected heterozygosity and allelic richness were 0.54, 0.64 and 3.50 for Corsica and 0.53, 0.71 and 4.40 for Sardinia), but the differences were not significant.…”

“…To shed further light on this issue, red deer from Corsica and Sardinia together with a selective sample of numerous European-type red deer were analysed for the first time, among them both Mesola and North-Africa (Hajji et al 2008; see Fig. 3).…”

“…Fig. 3 Geographical location of sample sites studied in a phylogeographic analysis by Hajji et al (2008). 1: Scotland (C. e. scoticus, n = 9), 2: France (C. e. hippelaphus, n = 14), 3: Southern Spain (C. e. hispanicus, n = 21), 4: Tunisia (C. e. barbarus, n = 30), 5: Sardinia (C. e. corsicanus, n = 23), 6: Corsica (C. e. corsicanus, n = 10), 7: Mesola (C. e. hippelaphus, n = 25), 8: Romanian Carpathians (C. e. montanus, n = 17).…”