Characterisation of the historic demographic decline of the British European polecat population

Abstract

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 severe demographic decline, followed by the current recovery, have still to be characterised in the European polecat in Britain. Here we carry out population-level whole-genome analyses of 65 polecats from Britain (Wales and England) and the European mainland. Our analyses reveal that Welsh polecats show genetic variability from both English and European polecats, while British polecats as a whole exhibit signs of genetic isolation from mainland European populations. We also reconstructed the demographic history of the Welsh polecat to quantify the magnitude of the bottleneck. Our analyses confirmed the drastic decline of the Welsh polecats effective population size, with a severe genetic bottleneck around 30-40 generations ago (1854-1894). We investigated whether whole genome diversity reflected this demographic event and found that Welsh polecats had significantly less genetic diversity than English polecats, but not European polecats. Runs of homozygosity and genetic load present in Welsh and English polecat genomes also indicated recent historic inbreeding. Our findings suggest that the increase in the British polecat population size may be attributed to admixture events. Additionally, we demonstrate that the Welsh polecat constitutes a genetically distinct population, which could be crucial for the overall conservation of European polecats by preserving unique genetic diversity.