Effective population size ( N e ) is a key parameter for monitoring the genetic health of threatened populations because it reflects a population's evolutionary potential and risk of extinction due to genetic stochasticity. However, its application to wildlife monitoring has been limited because it is difficult to measure in natural populations. The isolated and well‐studied population of grizzly bears ( U rsus arctos ) in the...

Identifying conservation units below the species level is becoming increasingly important, particularly when limited resources necessitate prioritization for conservation among such units. This problem is exemplified with caribou, a mammal with a circum‐Arctic distribution that is exposed to a broad spectrum of ecological conditions, but is also declining in many parts of its range. We used microsatellite markers to evaluate t...

Corridors may mitigate the adverse effects of habitat fragmentation by restoring or maintaining connectivity between disjunct populations. The efficacy of corridors for large carnivores, however, has rarely been evaluated objectively. We used noninvasive sampling, microsatellite analysis, and population assignment tests to evaluate the effectiveness of a regional corridor in connecting two Florida black bear ( Ursus americanus...

Genetic diversity and population structure were investigated across the core range of Tasmanian devils ( Sarcophilus laniarius ; Dasyuridae), a wide‐ranging marsupial carnivore restricted to the island of Tasmania. Heterozygosity (0.386–0.467) and allelic diversity (2.7–3.3) were low in all subpopulations and allelic size ranges were small and almost continuous, consistent with a founder effect. Island effects and repeated per...

To examine the effects of recent habitat fragmentation, we assayed genetic diversity in a rain forest endemic lizard, the prickly forest skink ( Gnypetoscincus queenslandiae ), from seven forest fragments and five sites in continuous forest on the Atherton tableland of northeastern Queensland, Australia. The rain forest in this region was fragmented by logging and clearing for dairy farms in the early 1900s and most forest fra...

Genetic assignment methods use genotype likelihoods to draw inference about where individuals were or were not born, potentially allowing direct, real‐time estimates of dispersal. We used simulated data sets to test the power and accuracy of Monte Carlo resampling methods in generating statistical thresholds for identifying F 0 immigrants in populations with ongoing gene flow, and hence for providing direct, real‐time estimate...

The brown bears of coastal Alaska have been recently regarded as comprising from one to three distinct genetic groups. We sampled brown bears from each of the regions for which hypotheses of genetic uniqueness have been made, including the bears of the Kodiak Archipelago and the bears of Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof (ABC) Islands in southeast Alaska. These samples were analysed with a suite of nuclear microsatellite marker...

Understanding the factors that influence the rate at which natural populations lose genetic diversity is a central aspect of conservation genetics because of the importance of genetic diversity in maintaining evolutionary potential and individual fitness. Concerns about loss of genetic diversity are particularly relevant to large carnivores, such as brown bears (Ursus arctos), that are distributed at low densities and are high...