Origin and genetic structure of a recovering bobcat (Lynx rufus) population

Abstract

Genetic analyses can provide important insights into the demographic processes that underlie recovering populations of mammals of conservation concern such as felid species. To better understand the recent and rapid recovery of bobcats (Lynx rufus (Schreber, 1777)) in Ohio, we analyzed samples from four states in the lower Great Lakes Region using 12 microsatellite DNA loci and a portion of the mtDNA control region. Our results showed that a newly established population of bobcats in the eastern part of Ohio was genetically distinct from a multistate population distributed across Kentucky, southern Ohio, West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. There was no direct genetic evidence of a bottleneck or inbreeding in this population. A lack of private alleles and only slightly lower levels of allelic richness and heterozygosity compared with its neighbors suggest that the eastern Ohio population likely originated from the migration of relatively large numbers of individuals from a source population rather than re-emerging from an undetected residual population. We recommend that a management plan should define the areas occupied by the two populations in Ohio as separate management units at least for the near future.