ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Survival and divergence in a small group: The extraordinary genomic history of the endangered Apennine brown bear stragglers.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers.
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68 citing papers in PubMed, 195 citations in OpenAlex.
- Whole-Genome Sequencing Revealed Local Genetic Differences and Multi-Layered Genetic Structure in Asian Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) Populations.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Male-Biased Dispersal Leads to Expansion After Decline: The Hokkaido Brown Bear (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Assessing the Evolutionary Potential of Endangered Populations Using Genomic Analyses of Selection in Ecologically Important Gene Regions.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Ancient DNA from shells reveals delayed genomic erosion and rapid immune adaptation in the critically endangered black abalone.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The relationship between genomic variation and genetic load: insights from small island populations.Heredity · 2026Article
- Exploring the mitochondrial genomes of the Indian dhole and wolf: a phylogenetic and conservation perspective.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Genomic-Guided Conservation Actions to Restore the Most Endangered Conifer in the Mediterranean Basin.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Coexisting With Humans: Genomic and Behavioral Consequences in a Small and Isolated Bear Population.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Exceedingly low genetic diversity in snow leopards due to persistently small population size.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A fixed mutation in the respiratory complex I impairs mitochondrial bioenergetics in the endangered Apennine brown bear.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Genomic data from the extinct California brown bear suggests a source population for reintroduction to California.The Journal of heredity · 2025Article
- Linking Measures of Inbreeding and Genetic Load to Demographic Histories Across Three Species of Bears.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Dynamics of Deleterious Mutations and Purifying Selection in Small Population Isolates.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- High Gene Expression Predicts Extremely Low Segregation of Deleterious Mutations in Large Penguin Populations.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Ancient dog introgression into the Iberian wolf genome may have facilitated adaptation to human-dominated landscapes.Genome research · 2025Article
- Adaptation in the Alleyways: Candidate Genes Under Potential Selection in Urban Coyotes.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Human Footprint and Forest Disturbance Reduce Space Use of Brown Bears (Ursus arctos) Across Europe.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Seasonal and anthropogenic effects on niche overlap and habitat selection by sympatric bears (Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Late Pleistocene polar bear genomes reveal the timing of allele fixation in key genes associated with Arctic adaptation.BMC genomics · 2024Article
- Genomic Consequences of Isolation and Inbreeding in an Island Dingo Population.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
27 authors at 15 institutions in 10 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
About 100 km east of Rome, in the central Apennine Mountains, a critically endangered population of ∼50 brown bears live in complete isolation. Mating outside this population is prevented by several 100 km of bear-free territories. We exploited this natural experiment to better understand the gene and genomic consequences of surviving at extremely small population size. We found that brown bear populations in Europe lost connectivity since Neolithic times, when farming communities expanded and forest burning was used for land clearance. In central Italy, this resulted in a 40-fold population decline. The overall genomic impact of this decline included the complete loss of variation in the mitochondrial genome and along long stretches of the nuclear genome. Several private and deleterious amino acid changes were fixed by random drift; predicted effects include energy deficit, muscle weakness, anomalies in cranial and skeletal development, and reduced aggressiveness. Despite this extreme loss of diversity, Apennine bear genomes show nonrandom peaks of high variation, possibly maintained by balancing selection, at genomic regions significantly enriched for genes associated with immune and olfactory systems. Challenging the paradigm of increased extinction risk in small populations, we suggest that random fixation of deleterious alleles (
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