The elusive wildcats face poaching, car accidents, and a dwindling gene pool.
Living with a lynx—for science.“Given the rapid loss of genetic diversity, we estimate that this population will go extinct in less than 30 years,” said co-author Nathan Huvier from the Centre Athenas,Not much is known about this population of lynxes. Scientists estimate that it contains a maximum of 150 adults and is poorly connected to the larger and healthier populations that live in Germany and Switzerland. The population is also not growing to a sustainable size.
The team believes that its population growth has been suppressed by poaching, automobile accidents, and. Inbreeding depression occurs when insufficient genetic diversity in a population leads to problems with reproduction and survival. “As there is a lack of genetic monitoring of the lynx in France and we consider that crucial for species conservation, we took the lead and did this work,”From 2008 to 2020, the team collected genetic samples to try and determine the genetic health of the population. They took samples from lynxes that were dead, injured, or orphaned to keep from stressing the healthy animals in an already precarious population.
“For us, this method is more ethical as there is no capture and thus stress induced for DNA sampling only,”They compared the genetic samples to references that came from the parent population of lynxes from thein Central and Eastern Europe. The team determined that while the size of the French population of lynxes is believed to be between 120 to 150 individuals, the population of healthy breeding wildcats is only 38 wildcats.
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