engleski

Variability of mitochondrial DNA in beech marten (Martes foina) from central Croatia

Beech (stone) marten (Martes foina, Erx. 1777) is found throughout Europe and Central Asia. This mustelid species prefers open landscape, being less dependent on forested habitats and is often found near human settlements. Although beech martens play a role in controlling rodent populations, in urban areas they are often treated as pests. Probably due to stabile and still growing population size throughout its habitat, studies on population genetic of beech marten are quite rare. Most of the data about sequence variation of beech marten mitochondrial DNA comes from research on molecular evolution and research on species-specific primers used for species identification, mostly based on cytochrome b, less often on control region sequence variation. We have analyzed 22 beech marten liver/kidney samples, collected in urban areas of central Croatia. In total, 28 polymorphic sites have been found on 302 base pair mitochondrial DNA control region sequence, representing 8 haplotypes. Two polymorphic sites were a result of insertion/deletion, while other resulted from substitution. The 8 haplotypes showed 2 - 26 pairwise differences resulting in sequence divergences of 0.7%-8.6%. Haplotype diversity (H) was 1.000 ± 0.0137, while the nucleotide diversity (Π) was 0.0343 ± 0.0182. Clear geographical pattern in the distribution of haplotypes in central Croatia was not found. Comparison of 8 Croatian mtDNA haplotypes found in this study with 3 control region sequences deposited in the GenBank (2 from Iberian Peninsula and 1 from undefined European country) revealed no potential matches between haplotypes.

beech marten; Martes foina; mitochondrion; variability

nije evidentirano