Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis)
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Bighorn sheep have undergone major declines during the 20th century
across most of their range due to habitat loss, disease outbreaks from
and competition with domestic cattle, and overhunting. As a result,
efforts to reintroduce bighorn sheep across the U.S. focused on
identifying the existence of potential subspecies/lineages to
reestablish ecologically well adapted individuals in the same areas
where they were extirpated from, but also on maintaining and potentially
increasing genetic diversity of reintroduced populations.
At the Waits' Lab, I have worked on the evaluation of genetic diversity and divergence of reintroduced bighorn sheep herds of Rocky Mountain and California lineages in Washington, Idaho (U.S.) and British Columbia (Canada). This work was done in partnership with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, using neutral and adaptive microsatellite data. We were able to see that there are genetic differences in bighorn sheep that are considered California vs. Rocky Mountain, and that the former are less genetically diverse than the latter. Currently I am looking at temporal genetic variation in native Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (never extirpated) herds in Idaho, considering historical and contemporary samples. |