ArticleBMC genomics2022
Genomic trajectories of a near-extinction event in the Chatham Island black robin.
Article in BMC genomics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Machine-Learning Models Trained on Genomic Summary Statistics Assess Extinction Risk and Recovery Potential of Bottlenecked Populations.Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Reduced Genetic Load and Inbreeding in Reintroduced African Wild Dogs Reflect the Benefits of Admixture.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- On the Use of the Jackknife to Compare RMolecular ecology resources · 2026Review
- Article
- Increased Genetic Load in Breed Chickens and Reduced Coding Content in Long ROH.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- From individuals to communities: How genomics is transforming biodiversity conservation.Genetics and molecular biology · 2026Article
- Genomic Signatures of Island Colonisation in Highly Diverse Primates.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Predicted deleterious mutations reveal the genetic architecture of male reproductive success in a lekking bird.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Long runs of homozygosity are reliable genomic markers of inbreeding depression.Trends in ecology & evolution · 2025Review
- Genetic purging in an island-endemic pigeon recovering from the brink of extinction.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Dynamics of Deleterious Mutations and Purifying Selection in Small Population Isolates.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Constraints to gene flow increase the risk of genome erosion in the Ngorongoro Crater lion population.Communications biology · 2025Article
- A comparison of genomic diversity and demographic history of the North Atlantic and Southwest Atlantic southern right whales.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
- Genomic exploration of the endangered oriental stork, Ciconia boyciana, sheds light on migration adaptation and future conservation.GigaScience · 2024Article
- Genetic Load and Adaptive Potential of a Recovered Avian Species that Narrowly Avoided Extinction.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Adaptation to the High-Arctic island environment despite long-term reduced genetic variation in Svalbard reindeer.iScience · 2023Article
- Range-wide and temporal genomic analyses reveal the consequences of near-extinction in Swedish moose.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Biocultural aspects of species extinctions.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2023Review
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundUnderstanding the micro--evolutionary response of populations to demographic declines is a major goal in evolutionary and conservation biology. In small populations, genetic drift can lead to an accumulation of deleterious mutations, which will increase the risk of extinction. However, demographic recovery can still occur after extreme declines, suggesting that natural selection may purge deleterious mutations, even in extremely small populations. The Chatham Island black robin (Petroica traversi) is arguably the most inbred bird species in the world. It avoided imminent extinction in the early 1980s and after a remarkable recovery from a single pair, a second population was established and the two extant populations have evolved in complete isolation since then. Here, we analysed 52 modern and historical genomes to examine the genomic consequences of this extreme bottleneck and the subsequent translocation.
resultsWe found evidence for two-fold decline in heterozygosity and three- to four-fold increase in inbreeding in modern genomes. Moreover, there was partial support for temporal reduction in total load for detrimental variation. In contrast, compared to historical genomes, modern genomes showed a significantly higher realised load, reflecting the temporal increase in inbreeding. Furthermore, the translocation induced only small changes in the frequency of deleterious alleles, with the majority of detrimental variation being shared between the two populations.
conclusionOur results highlight the dynamics of mutational load in a species that recovered from the brink of extinction, and show rather limited temporal changes in mutational load. We hypothesise that ancestral purging may have been facilitated by population fragmentation and isolation on several islands for thousands of generations and may have already reduced much of the highly deleterious load well before human arrival and introduction of pests to the archipelago. The majority of fixed deleterious variation was shared between the modern populations, but translocation of individuals with low mutational load could possibly mitigate further fixation of high-frequency deleterious variation.
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