Researchers have uncovered an unexpected key to the Iberian lynx's survival: a genetic boost from its larger cousin, the Eurasian lynx, thousands of years ago.
Once teetering on the brink of extinction, the Iberian lynx population has made a remarkable recovery, growing from just 25 breeding females in 2002 to over 400 in 2023, thanks to dedicated conservation efforts. However, with numbers still fragile, conservationists may find valuable lessons in the species' past.
A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution revealed how ancient interbreeding played a crucial role in boosting the Iberian lynx's genetic diversity, offering hope for its continued survival.
"The Iberian lynx is now going through a spectacular recovery thanks to an ambitious and integral conservation program," José Godoy, one of the study's authors, told Newsweek. "However, the low genetic diversity of the species, and the associated low capacity to adapt to environmental changes, may still pose some risk to its long-term viability."
Using specialized clean room facilities to prevent contamination, scientists extracted nuclear DNA from Iberian lynx bones dating back 2,500 to 4,000 years.
"Any non-lynx DNA molecules from all kinds of sources, such as decomposition bacteria, soil microorganisms, the people that excavated the bone or even ourselves, would vastly outnumber the ancient ones," Johanna Paijmans, another co-author of the study, told Newsweek.
"So we have to wear PPE in the lab to prevent outside contamination as much as possible and use highly specialized techniques to extract, process and sequence the DNA," she said.
After extraction and sequencing, the computational work began to separate the lynx from the contamination DNA and piece the small pieces together for comparison with other lynx samples.
"This whole process, as you can imagine, is very intensive," Paijmans said.
The fruits of the team's labor defied conventional wisdom: The ancient Lynx had even less genetic diversity than its modern descendants.
"The Iberian lynx has never been a species as abundant as the Eurasian lynx or other widespread felids, and it may have gone through other severe bottlenecks in the past," Godoy said. "This can explain its extremely low genetic diversity. How the species managed to persist to these days despite this is a mystery."
Part of the answer may lie in an encounter between the two lynx species. Further analysis revealed that the modern Iberian lynx shares more genetic variants with the Eurasian lynx than its ancient counterparts did.
This points to successful interbreeding between the two species within the past 2,500 years when their territories overlapped in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly southern France and northern Italy.
Godoy explained that this interbreeding wouldn't create a new species, since their divergence originally occurred over a period of a million years or longer.
He added, "These hybridization events may introduce some genetic variation from the other species, which will be later sorted out by natural selection. Those traits that are maintained differentiated in the two species by strong natural selection will thus not become homogenized by limited hybridization."
While the Iberian lynx's recovery is promising, challenges remain. The current population still falls short of the 1,100 reproductive females needed for genetic viability.
However, this discovery opens new perspectives on conservation strategies. Part of the ongoing conservation efforts already included introducing geographically separated Iberian lynx populations to each other to increase genetic diversity. A carefully managed hybridization with the Eurasian lynx could be considered in the future to move the process along further.
Humans may not even need to be involved. As conservation efforts expand the ranges of the Eurasian and Iberian lynx, natural encounters between the two are increasingly becoming possible.
"Nature may not wait for us, and we may see some natural hybridization occurring if the ongoing expansion of the two species brings them into contact one more time," Godoy said.
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Reference
Lucena-Perez, M., Paijmans, J.L.A., Nocete, F., Nadal, J., Detry, C., Dalén, L., Hofreiter, M., Barlow, A., & Godoy, J.A. (2024). Recent increase in species-wide diversity after interspecies introgression in the highly endangered Iberian lynx. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 8(2), 282–292. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02267-7
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