Tracing the first steps of American sturgeon pioneers in Europe.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A Baltic population of Atlantic sturgeon was founded approximately 1,200 years ago by migrants from North America, but after centuries of persistence, the population was extirpated in the 1960s, mainly as a result of over-harvest and habitat alterations. As there are four genetically distinct groups of Atlantic sturgeon inhabiting North American rivers today, we investigated the genetic provenance of the historic Baltic population by ancient DNA analyses using mitochondrial and nuclear markers.

Results

The phylogeographic signal obtained from multilocus microsatellite DNA genotypes and mitochondrial DNA control region haplotypes, when compared to existing baseline datasets from extant populations, allowed for the identification of the region-of-origin of the North

SUBMITTER: Ludwig A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2527320 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature