Parasite success typically depends on a close relationship with one or more hosts; therefore, attributes of parasitic infection have the potential to provide indirect details of host natural history and are biologically relevant to animal conservation. Characterization of parasite infections has been useful in delineating host populations and has served as a proxy for assessment of environmental quality. In other cases, the ut...

Sea otters, Enhydra lutris , were once abundant along the nearshore areas of the North Pacific. The international maritime fur trade that ended in 1911 left 13 small remnant populations with low genetic diversity. Subsequent translocations into previously occupied habitat resulted in several reintroduced populations along the coast of North America. We sampled sea otters between 2008 and 2011 throughout much of their current r...

The advent of whole genome sequencing has revealed much about the genomes of animals including the relatively large percentage of the genome consisting of endogenous retroviruses (ERV; International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, 2001). An ERV arises when a retrovirus integrates into a host germ cell genome through normal infection processes. Germline infections can be transmitted to offspring through Mendelian inheritanc...

Urbanization is a major factor driving habitat fragmentation and connectivity loss in wildlife. However, the impacts of urbanization on connectivity can vary among species and even populations due to differences in local landscape characteristics, and our ability to detect these relationships may depend on the spatial scale at which they are measured. Bobcats ( Lynx rufus ) are relatively sensitive to urbanization and the stat...

Apex predators are important indicators of intact natural ecosystems. They are also sensitive to urbanization because they require broad home ranges and extensive contiguous habitat to support their prey base. Pumas ( Puma concolor ) can persist near human developed areas, but urbanization may be detrimental to their movement ecology, population structure, and genetic diversity. To investigate potential effects of urbanization...

The extent and nature of genetic differentiation in Semotilus atromaculatus , one of the most abundant and widespread leuciscids in North America, were evaluated based on mitochondrial (mt) and nuclear DNA sequence variation. Phylogenetic relationships were first inferred based on a fragment of the cytochrome b ( cytb ) region and the nuclear intron s7 gene for S. atromaculatus and all other congeners as well as representative...