Abstract :
[en] During the last century, the Eurasian otter (Lutra
lutra) suffered a dramatic decline in Europe. In France, the
same pattern of sharp decline was observed with local extinctions
in many regions. Before the recolonisation process, two
main populations still remained along the Atlantic coast and in
the Massif Central. To investigate the impact of this decline on
the genetic diversity and structure of the French otter population,
tissue samples of 144 otter carcasses from road kills that
were found during 1992–2011 along the Atlantic coast and in
the Massif Central were used. They were analysed using 10
microsatellites loci. Observed (Ho = 0.64) and expected heterozygosity
(He = 0.62) were moderate, but consistent with
results found in other European populations. The bottleneck
test showed an excess of heterozygotes, providing evidence of
a recent decline. There was evidence for weak but significant
allelic frequencies divergence between otters from the Atlantic
coast and those from the Massif Central (Fst=0.040, p<0.05),
probably resulting from their isolation prior to the
recolonisation process. As the French otter population has
been expanding for several years, genetic intermixing is now
occurring. Although this expansion has not yet genetically
homogenised all populations, this is may be a matter a time.
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