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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2011

Abstract

The protected brown bears (Ursus arctos) of Northern Europe are often involved in conflicts with humans, livestock depredation as well as subjected to illegal hunting. STR markers are the preferred forensic tools applied in wildlife crime cases and may be used for traceability and as tools for population management. Thus, a validated STR profiling system according to forensic standards is suggested. We have estimated allele frequencies and analysed repeat structure of 13 STR loci (G1D, G10B, Mu05, Mu09, Mu15, Mu26, G1A, G10L, Mu10, Mu23, Mu50, Mu51, Mu59) in 479 individuals of eight Northern European brown bear populations. STR analysis of hair- and faecal-samples (> 5000) collected in the field as well as tissue samples from shot bears (93) were used to genotype the individuals. The success rate for samples collected in the field was approximately 70%. Species specificity testing showed no false positive bear genotypes. These results show that hairs and faecal samples represent an excellent source for bear DNA that may be utilized to sample allele frequency estimates from living populations. For the eight different populations (four from Norway, one from Sweden and one from Finland and two from Northwest Russia) we have determined the observed and expected heterozygosities, departures from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, population substructures and probabilities of identity. Our results suggest that samples can be assigned to a particular individual if using a combination of ten or more of the validated markers in this brown bear DNA profiling system.