Diversity of mtDNA in Southern River Otter (Lontra provocax) from Argentinean Patagonia

DANIELA CENTRÓN,BENJAMÍN RAMÍREZ, LAURA FASOLA, DAVID MAC DONALD, CLAUDIO CHEHÉBAR, ADRIÁN SCHIAVINI, MARCELO CASSINI

JOURNAL OF HEREDITY

Oxford University Press

Año: 2008 vol. 99 p. 198 - 201

0022-1503

Lontra provocax is an endemic species from Patagonia thathas been categorized as ‘‘endangered’’ by the InternationalUnion for Conservation of Nature. In this study, noninvasivemolecular methods were used to investigate the geneticdiversity and haplotype distribution of L. provocax inArgentinean Patagonia. We analyzed 150 scat samplescollected from 1995 to 2006 and obtained 13 sequencesof control region with 1 haplotype and 34 sequences ofcytochrome b with 4 haplotypes. The population of thesouth of Patagonia (Tierra del Fuego and De los EstadosIsland) showed a relatively high haplotype diversity (h 50.71) and was statistically different to the population of thenorth (analysis of molecular variance, FST 5 0.15, P 50.018). We concluded that there are 2 different subpopulationsof L. provocax that deserve conservation attentionand that the southern population appears not to havesuffered a human-induced population bottleneck of thesort typically experienced by various otter species aroundthe world.