The European polecat ( Mustela putorius ) has a widespread distribution across many countries of mainland Europe but is documented to be declining within these ranges. In Britain, direct persecution led to a severe decline of the polecat population during the 19th century. Unlike European mainland populations, it is now recovering across much of its former British range. The genomic and conservation implications of such a seve...

The blue antelope or bluebuck ( Hippotragus leucophaeus ) is an extinct species of antelope that lived in South Africa until ca. 1799–1800. Disappearing only 34 years after it was described, it was the first large African mammal species to have become extinct in recent times. Therefore, current scientific knowledge of the blue antelope is limited to museum specimens. However, these are extremely rare and further complicated by...

Dolphins are mobile apex marine predators. Over the past three decades, warm-water adapted dolphin species (short-beaked common and striped) have expanded their ranges northward and become increasingly abundant in British waters. Meanwhile, cold-water adapted dolphins (white-beaked and Atlantic white-sided) abundance trends are decreasing, with evidence of the distribution of white-beaked dolphins shifting from southern to nor...

Species monitoring and conservation is increasingly challenging under current climate change scenarios. For the North Atlantic right whale ( Eubalaena glacialis ) this challenge is heightened by the added effects of complicated and uncertain past species demography. Right whales once had a much wider distribution across the North Atlantic Ocean, although the degree to which right whales in the western and eastern North Atlanti...

Following nineteenth-century declines, polecats Mustela putorius are recolonising Great Britain. Polecat diet relates to two potential risks to recovery. First, rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus , which are important prey for polecats, have experienced extreme population fluctuations, with near extirpation due to myxomatosis in the 1950s, recovery in 1960s–1990s and declines in 1990s–2010s. Second, polecats are secondarily exposed...

In the 19th century, the B ritish polecat suffered a demographic contraction, as a consequence of direct persecution, reaching its lowest population in the years that preceded the F irst W orld W ar. The polecat is now recovering and expanding throughout Britain, but introgressive hybridization with feral ferrets has been reported, which could be masking the true range of the polecat and introducing domestic genes into the spe...

There is now considerable evidence to suggest the cheetah ( Acinonyx jubatus ) has limited genetic diversity. However, the extent of this and its significance to the fitness of the cheetah population, both in the wild and captivity, is the subject of some debate. This reflects the difficulty associated with establishing a direct link between low variability at biologically significant loci and deleterious aspects of phenotype...

This paper describes a genetic analysis of wild‐living cats in Scotland. Samples from 230 wild‐living Scottish cats (including 13 museum skins) and 74 house cats from England and Scotland were surveyed for nine microsatellite loci. Pelage characteristics of the wild‐living cats were recorded, and the cats were then grouped into five separate categories depending on the degree to which they conformed to the characteristics attr...