Genetic monitoring of an isolated population of a rapidly declining mammal, the Common Hamster.

摘要: DiscussionWe used a genetic fingerprint system combined with burrow counts to acquire population status data. The comparison of spring and summer harvest burrow counts indicated a population growth. We could reveal that there was no change in sex-ratio between the two sampling sessions. Due to the fact that we had only three individuals recaptured in between both sampling sessions indicates a high turnover rate. Estimates of effective population size showed that although the population seems to have a relatively high number of individuals as well as a high turn-over rate it suffers from longtime isolation effects. The expected heterozygosity was shown to be very low especially when compared to a large population such as Ref. 2 (Main-Kinzig-Kreis, one of the remaining large hamster populations in the entire region). Genotyping of hair samples allowed the detection and redetection of individuals and therefore allowed to determine a minimum individual number in the observed population. This approach promises a much higher precision and provides even additional population data, such as genetic diversity, population origin and sex ratio. Genetic individualization proofed that even in the springtime individuals were using several burrows simultaneously (Fig. 5). The genetic individualization provides data which can be used to acquire a minimum abundance which is not possible to be overestimated.