Sex ratio and relatedness in the Griffon vulture ( Gyps fulvus ) population of Serbia

PeerJ

article

Slobodan Davidović¹  Saša Marinković²  Irena Hribšek²  Aleksandra Patenković¹  Marina Stamenković-Radak¹  Marija Tanasković¹ 

[1] Department of Genetics of Populations and Ecogenotoxicology, Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković”—National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade;Birds of Prey Protection Foundation;Department of Ecology, Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković”—National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade;Natural History Museum Belgrade;Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade

关键词: Conservation biology;    Relatedness;    Sex ratio;    Gyps fulvus;    mtDNA;    Microsatellites;    Molecular sexing;    Serbia;    Griffon vulture;    Protected species;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.14477

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Background Once a widespread species across the region of Southeast Europe, the Griffon vulture is now confined to small and isolated populations across the Balkan Peninsula. The population from Serbia represents its biggest and most viable population that can serve as an important reservoir of genetic diversity from which the birds can be used for the region’s reintroduction programmes. The available genetic data for this valuable population are scarce and as a protected species that belongs to the highly endangered vulture group, it needs to be well described so that it can be properly managed and used as a restocking population. Considering the serious recent bottleneck event that the Griffon vulture population from Serbia experienced we estimated the overall relatedness among the birds from this population. Sex ratio, another important parameter that shows the vitality and strength of the population was evaluated as well. Methods During the annual monitoring that was performed in the period from 2013–2021, we collected blood samples from individual birds that were marked in the nests. In total, 169 samples were collected and each was used for molecular sexing while 58 presumably unrelated birds from different nests were used for inbreeding and relatedness analyses. The relatedness was estimated using both biparentally (10 microsatellite loci) and uniparentally (Cytb and D-loop I of mitochondrial DNA) inherited markers. Results The level of inbreeding was relatively high and on average it was 8.3% while the mean number of relatives for each bird was close to three. The sex ratio was close to 1:1 and for the analysed period of 9 years, it didn’t demonstrate a statistically significant deviation from the expected ratio of 1:1, suggesting that this is a stable and healthy population. Our data suggest that, even though a relatively high level of inbreeding can be detected among the individual birds, the Griffon vulture population from Serbia can be used as a source population for restocking and reintroduction programmes in the region. These data combined with previously observed genetic differentiation between the populations from the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas suggest that the introduction of foreign birds should be avoided and that local birds should be used instead.

【 授权许可】

CC BY