Today, California condor lives only in southern and eastern parts of California and Arizona. This beautiful animal once inhabited almost whole North America. All rights reserved.California condor is one of the largest birds in the world and the largest bird of North America. We show how both long-term evolutionary forces and recent inbreeding have shaped the genome of the California condor, and provide crucial genomic resources to enable future research and conservation.Ĭonservation demographic history extinction genomics inbreeding.Ĭopyright © 2021 The Authors. Correlations between genome-wide diversity and recombination rate further suggest a history of purifying selection against linked deleterious alleles, boding well for future restoration. Interestingly, the California condor genome retains a high degree of variation, which our analyses reveal is a legacy of its historically high abundance. The genomes of all three species show evidence of historic population declines. For comparison, we also examined the genomes of two close relatives: the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus Vulnerable 3) and the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura Least Concern 3). To fill this gap and aid future management of the species, we produced a high-quality chromosome-length genome assembly for the California condor and analyzed its genome-wide diversity. The condor's recent near-extinction from lead poisoning, poaching, and loss of habitat is well documented, 4 but much about its history remains obscure. Following decades of captive breeding and release efforts, there are now >300 free-flying wild condors and ∼200 in captivity. Though condors once ranged throughout North America, by 1982 only 22 individuals remained. 1 During the latter half of the twentieth century, North America's largest soaring bird, 2 the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus Critically Endangered 3), briefly went extinct in the wild. Electronic address: to their small population sizes, threatened and endangered species frequently suffer from a lack of genetic diversity, potentially leading to inbreeding depression and reduced adaptability. 9 Institute for Human Genetics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.8 Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. ![]()
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