Genetic structure of the invasive Castor canadensis in the Archipelago of Tierra del Fuego

FASANELLA MARIANA; POLJAK SEBASTIÁN; LIZARRALDE MARTA SUSANA

Congreso; 10th International Mammalogical Congress; 2009

Biological invasions have been identified as the second main cause of biodiversity loss and the main cause of species extinctions in island ecosystems. The introduction of 25 pairs of North American beaver (Castor canadensis) in the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) in 1946 has become a serious problem. Despite control efforts, the population has increased considerably; today, there are approximately 100,000 individuals. Although the ecological and economic effects of invasive species have sometimes been evaluated, there has not been much attention devoted to the genetic structure of invading mammals. We have conducted molecular analysis of beavers from 3 subpopulations of the Archipelago of Tierra del Fuego as a means of characterizing the genetic structure (at a macro and micro geographic scale) of the invasive population. We identified 7 D-loop haplotypes among 111 individuals. Our results of AMOVA (Fst=0.104,p