Museomics and morphological analyses of historical and contemporary peninsular Italian wolf (Canis lupus italicus) samples.

ABSTRACT: After centuries of decline and protracted bottlenecks, the peninsular Italian wolf population has naturally recovered. However, an exhaustive comprehension of the effects of such a conservation success is still limited by the reduced availability of historical data. Therefore, in this study, we morphologically and genetically analyzed historical and contemporary wolf samples, also exploiting the optimization of an innovative bone DNA extraction method, to describe the morphological variability of the subspecies and its genetic diversity during the last 30 years. We obtained high amplification and genotyping success rates for tissue, blood and also petrous bone DNA samples. Multivariate, clustering and variability analyses confirmed that the Apennine wolf population is genetically and morph

SUBMITTER: Fabbri E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11794570 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature