Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), a feline spread all over Eurasia has, as many other carnivores,
been severely hunted, and due to this many populations of lynx have suffered from
bottlenecks and fragmentation. As bottlenecks and fragmentation may have detrimental
effects on the genetic status of a population, researchers have been keen to look closer into
the genetic status of the lynx. With the development of next generation sequencing and
improved analyses of genetics this research into lynx genetics has been enabled. Research has
shown that there indeed are signs of genetic structuring between lynx populations, at least on
a larger scale. In this report the genetic structure within the Scandinavian lynx population was
examined by analyzing DNA from Swedish and Norwegian. 6 possible clusters were
suggested within the population, and all but 4 individuals were successfully assigned into one
of these 6 clusters. Further analyses of the fixation between suggested clusters revealed that
fixation was very low, implying that the population structure within the Scandinavian lynx
population is weak. This is probable as the population suffered briefly from a bottleneck and
has later expanded rapidly throughout the two countries, which could be a causation of the
weak genetic differentiation within the population.