Ecology and Chronic Wasting Disease Epidemiology Shape Prion Protein Gene Variation in Rocky Mountain Elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni).

As chronic wasting disease (CWD) continues to spread across North America, the relationship between CWD and host genetics has become of interest. In Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni), one or two copies of a leucine allele at codon 132 of the prion protein gene (132L*) has been shown to prolong the incubation period of CWD. Our study examined the relationship between CWD epidemiology and codon 132 evolution in elk from Wyoming, USA, from 2011 to 2018.

Loss of plasticity in maturation timing after ten years of captive spawning in a delta smelt conservation hatchery.

Adaptation to captivity in spawning programs can lead to unintentional consequences, such as domestication that results in reduced fitness in the wild. The timing of sexual maturation has been shown to be a trait under domestication selection in fish hatcheries, which affects a fish's access to mating opportunities and aligning their offspring's development with favorable environmental conditions. Earlier maturing fish may be favored in hatchery settings where managers provide artificially optimal growing conditions, but early maturation may reduce fitness in the wild if, for example, there is a mismatch between timing of reproduction and availability of resources that support recruitment.

Multi-population puma connectivity could restore genomic diversity to at-risk coastal populations in California.

Urbanization is decreasing wildlife habitat and connectivity worldwide, including for apex predators, such as the puma (). Puma populations along California's central and southern coastal habitats have experienced rapid fragmentation from development, leading to calls for demographic and genetic management. To address urgent conservation genomic concerns, we used double-digest restriction-site associated DNA (ddRAD) sequencing to analyze 16,285 genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 401 pumas sampled broadly across the state.

Spatio-temporal analyses reveal infectious disease-driven selection in a free-ranging ungulate.

Infectious diseases play an important role in wildlife population dynamics by altering individual fitness, but detecting disease-driven natural selection in free-ranging populations is difficult due to complex disease-host relationships. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal infectious prion disease in cervids for which mutations in a single gene have been mechanistically linked to disease outcomes, providing a rare opportunity to study disease-driven selection in wildlife. In Wyoming, USA, CWD has gradually spread across mule deer () populations, producing natural variation in disease history to evaluate selection pressure.

Pronghorn population genomics show connectivity in the core of their range.

Preserving connectivity in the core of a species' range is crucial for long-term persistence. However, a combination of ecological characteristics, social behavior, and landscape features can reduce connectivity among wildlife populations and lead to genetic structure. Pronghorn (), for example, exhibit fluctuating herd dynamics and variable seasonal migration strategies, but GPS tracking studies show that landscape features such as highways impede their movements, leading to conflicting hypotheses about expected levels of genetic structure.

Accuracy of de novo assembly of DNA sequences from double-digest libraries varies substantially among software.

Advances in DNA sequencing have made it feasible to gather genomic data for non-model organisms and large sets of individuals, often using methods for sequencing subsets of the genome. Several of these methods sequence DNA associated with endonuclease restriction sites (various RAD and GBS methods). For use in taxa without a reference genome, these methods rely on de novo assembly of fragments in the sequencing library.