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Journal of Heredity Advance Access published online on February 29, 2008
Journal of Heredity, doi:10.1093/jhered/esm117
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© The American Genetic Association. 2008. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Brief Communication

Diversity of mtDNA in Southern River Otter (Lontra provocax) from Argentinean Patagonia

Daniela Centrón, Benjamín Ramirez, Laura Fasola, David W. Macdonald, Claudio Chehébar, Adrián Schiavini, and Marcelo H. Cassini

From the Departamento de Microbiología, Parasitología e Inmunología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina (Centrón and Ramirez); the Organización PROFAUNA, Buenos Aires, Argentina (Fasola and Cassini); the Zoology Department, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Oxon OX13 5QL, United Kingdom (Fasola and Macdonald); the Delegación Regional Patagonia, Administración de Parques Nacionales, Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina (Chehébar); the Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (Schiavini); and the Departamento de Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Nacional de Luján, Rutas 5 y 7, 6700 Luján, Argentina (Cassini)

Address correspondence to Dr M. H. Cassini at the address above, or e-mail: mhcassini{at}yahoo.com.ar.

Lontra provocax is an endemic species from Patagonia that has been categorized as "endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In this study, noninvasive molecular methods were used to investigate the genetic diversity and haplotype distribution of L. provocax in Argentinean Patagonia. We analyzed 150 scat samples collected from 1995 to 2006 and obtained 13 sequences of control region with 1 haplotype and 34 sequences of cytochrome b with 4 haplotypes. The population of the south of Patagonia (Tierra del Fuego and De los Estados Island) showed a relatively high haplotype diversity (h = 0.71) and was statistically different to the population of the north (analysis of molecular variance, FST = 0.15, P = 0.018). We concluded that there are 2 different subpopulations of L. provocax that deserve conservation attention and that the southern population appears not to have suffered a human-induced population bottleneck of the sort typically experienced by various otter species around the world.

Corresponding Editor: Oliver Ryder

Received November 15, 2006
Accepted November 7, 2007


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