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Zoological Science
Abstract
The raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) is endemic to East Asia but has been introduced in Europe. Its high adaptability enabled its rapid colonization of European countries, where population growth has been raising concerns regarding ecosystem disturbance and the spread of zoonotic diseases. The genetic diversity and structure of endemic, source, and introduced populations from seven locations across South Korea, China, Russian Far East, Finland (spread to Finland after introduction to European part of Russia from Russian Far East), Vietnam, and Japan (Honshu and Hokkaido) were examined based on 16 microsatellite loci. Two major and significantly different (F ST = 0.236) genetic clusters were found: continental (South Korean, Chinese, Russian, Finnish, and Vietnamese) and island (Japanese) populations. The continental raccoon dog population comprises three subpopulations (Chinese_Russian_Finnish, South Korean, and Vietnamese) and the Japanese population consists of Honshu and Hokkaido subpopulations. The genetic diversity and geographic structure of raccoon dogs in East Asia has been influenced by natural barriers to gene flow and reveals a typical central-marginal trend in genetic diversity (continental vs. island, and central vs. marginal or source vs. introduced within continental populations). The detected differences between continental and island populations agree with those reported in previous studies that considered these populations as different species.
We gratefully express our gratitude to all who donated raccoon dog samples for this study: Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Natural History, Japan; Shikoku Institute of Natural History, Japan; Professor. Soichi Maruyama, Nihon University, Japan; Dr. Truong Son Nguyen, Vietnam Academy of Sciences and Technology, Vietnam. This work was supported by the Korean National Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2009-0085754) funded by the Korean Government (MESET) and partially supported by the Research Institute for Veterinary Science, Seoul National University.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
YJH carried out the molecular experiments, data analysis and wrote the manuscript. KSK discussed the results, helped to draft the manuscript, and advised for discussion. JK and KK provided genetic materials and commented on the manuscript. IV, SMG, LY, YPZ, MS provided genetic materials, advised the project and reviewed the manuscript. HL and MSM conceived of the study and designed the experiments, discussed the results and reviewed the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript.
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