Porcine_60K_Data_Wilkinsonetal2013.tarMapping and variant calling data on SSC5:98000000-99000000This file shares the same REAME as SSC11_53500000-55500000.tarSSC5_98000000-99000000.tarMapping and variant calling data on SSC5:3100000-34000000This file shares the same REAME as SSC11_53500000-55500000.tarSSC5_3100000-34000000.tarMapping and variant calling data on SSC11:53500000-55500000SSC11_53500000-55500000.tar

European white stork are long considered to diverge to eastern and western migration pools as a result of independent overwintering flyways. In relatively recent times, the western and northern distribution has been subject to dramatic population declines and country-specific extirpations. A number of independent reintroduction programs were started in the mid 1950s to bring storks back to historical ranges. Founder individuals were sourced opportunistically from the Eastern and Western European distributions and Algeria, leading to...

Caviar-producing sturgeons belonging to the genus Acipenser are considered to be one of the most endangered species groups in the world. Continued overfishing in spite of increasing legislation, zero catch quotas and extensive aquaculture production have led to the collapse of wild stocks across Europe and Asia. The evolutionary relationships among Adriatic, Russian, Persian and Siberian sturgeons are complex because of past introgression events and remain poorly understood. Conservation management, traceability and enforcement suffer a...

Captive populations provide a valuable insurance against extinctions in the wild. However, they are also vulnerable to the negative impacts of inbreeding, selection and drift. Genetic information is therefore considered a critical aspect of conservation management. Recent developments in sequencing technologies have the potential to improve the outcomes of management programmes; however, the transfer of these approaches to applied conservation has been slow. The scimitar‐horned oryx (Oryx dammah) is a North African antelope that has...

DECK TWO: Report FindingsA report by the ZERO”FIVE Food Industry Centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University for the Welsh Government Food Division as part of Lot 9: Programmes to Support the Food & Drink Sector.
Food Safety Schemes (FSSs) are essential to the food and drink industry. FSSs provide the framework for compliance within the industry to assist in the production of safe and legal food. FSSs are differentiated by having their own criteria for...

Traits used in communication, such as colour signals, are expected to have positive consequences for reproductive success, but their associations with survival are little understood. Previous studies have mainly investigated linear relationships between signals and survival, but both hump-shaped and U-shaped relationships can also be predicted, depending on the main costs involved in trait expression. Furthermore, few studies have taken the plasticity of signals into account in viability selection analyses. The relationship between signal expression...

Unraveling adaptive genetic variation represents, in addition to the estimate of population demographic parameters, a cornerstone for the management of aquatic natural living resources, which in turn, represent the raw material for breeding programs. The turbot (Scophthalmus maximus) is a marine flatfish of high commercial value living on the European continental shelf. While wild populations are declining, aquaculture is flourishing in Southern Europe. We evaluated the genetic structure of turbot throughout its natural distribution range...

Understanding the mechanisms governing the coexistence of organisms is an important question in ecology, and providing potential solutions contributes to conservation science. In this study, we evaluated the contribution of several mechanisms to the coexistence of two sympatric frugivores, using western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in a tropical rainforest of southeast Cameroon as a model system. We collected great ape fecal samples to determine and classify fruit species...

Supporting small Welsh food and drink manufacturing businesses to obtain food safety certification will help to ensure the safety, security and integrity of the food supply chain, as well as enable growth of the food industry in Wales. The Food Innovation Wales “Barriers to Accreditation” report identified the potential barriers for Welsh manufacturers in obtaining certification. Although other research studies have identified potential barriers, few have explored suitable support mechanisms. None have implemented interventions to...

The genomic architecture underlying ecological divergence and ecological speciation with gene flow is still largely unknown for most organisms. One central question is whether divergence is genome-wide or localized in “genomic mosaics” during early stages when gene flow is still pronounced. Empirical work has so far been limited, and the relative impacts of gene flow and natural selection on genomic patterns have not been fully explored. Here, we use ecotypes of Atlantic cod to investigate...

Both environmental- and genetic-influences can result in phenotypic variation. Quantifying the relative contributions of local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity to phenotypes is key to understanding the effect of environmental variation on populations. Identifying the selective pressures that drive divergence is an important, but often lacking, next step. High gene flow between high- and low-altitude common frog (Rana temporaria) breeding sites has previously been demonstrated in Scotland. The aim of this study was to assess whether...

Recent and historical species' associations with climate can be inferred using molecular markers. This knowledge of population and species-level responses to climatic variables can then be used to predict the potential consequences of ongoing climate change. The aim of this study was to predict responses of Rana temporaria to environmental change in Scotland by inferring historical and contemporary patterns of gene flow in relation to current variation in local thermal conditions. We first inferred colonization...

Sperm competition theory predicts that males should modulate sperm investment according to their social status. Sperm speed, one proxy of sperm quality, also influences the outcome of sperm competition because fast sperm cells may fertilize eggs before slow sperm cells. We evaluated whether the social status of males predicted their sperm speed in a wild population of dunnocks (Prunella modularis). In addition to the traditional analysis of the average speed of sperm cells per sample,...

The degree of introgressive hybridisation between the Scottish wildcat and domestic cat has long been suspected to be advanced. Here we use a 35-SNP-marker test, designed to assess hybridisation between wildcat and domestic cat populations in Scotland, to assess a database of 265 wild-living and captive cat samples, and test the assumptions of the test using 3097 SNP markers generated independently in a subset of the data using ddRAD. We discovered that despite increased genetic...

While hybridisation has long been recognised as an important natural phenomenon in evolution, the conservation of taxa subject to introgressive hybridisation from domesticated forms is a subject of intense debate. Hybridisation of Scottish wildcats and domestic cats is a good example in this regard. We develop a modelling framework to determine the timescale of introgression using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC). Applying the model to ddRAD-seq data from 129 individuals, genotyped at 6,546 loci, we show...

Environmental pollution often accompanies the expansion and urbanization of human populations where sewage and wastewaters commonly have an impact on the marine environments. Here, we explored the potential for faecal bacterial pathogens, of anthropic origin, to spread to marine wildlife in coastal areas. The common zoonotic bacterium Campylobacter was isolated from grey seals (Halichoerus grypus), an important sentinel species for environmental pollution, and compared to isolates from wild birds, agricultural sources and clinical samples to...

Shallow population structure is generally reported for most marine fish and explained as a consequence of high dispersal, connectivity and large population size. Targeted gene analyses and more recently genome-wide studies have challenged such view, suggesting that adaptive divergence might occur even when neutral markers provide genetic homogeneity across populations. Here, 381 SNPs located in transcribed regions were used to assess large- and fine-scale population structure in the European hake (Merluccius merluccius), a widely distributed...

Practical biodiversity conservation relies on delineation of biologically meaningful units. Manta and devil rays (Mobulidae) are threatened worldwide, yet morphological similarities and a succession of recent taxonomic changes impede the development of an effective conservation strategy. Here, we generate genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data from a geographically and taxonomically representative set of manta and devil ray samples to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships and evaluate species boundaries under the general lineage concept. We show that nominal...

The Nubian ibex (Capra nubiana) is patchily distributed across parts of Africa and Arabia. In Oman, it is one of the few free-ranging wild mammals found in the central and southern regions. Its population is declining due to habitat degradation, human expansion, poaching, and fragmentation. Here we investigated the population’s genetic diversity using mitochondrial DNA (D-loop 186bp and cytochrome b 487bp). We found that the Nubian ibex in the southern region of Oman was more...

A review of food, health and nutrition policy by the ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University on behalf of the Welsh Government

A review of food, health and nutrition policy by the ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University on behalf of the Welsh Government

DECK TWO: Report FindingsA report by the ZERO”FIVE Food Industry Centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University for the Welsh Government Food Division as part of Lot 9: Programmes to Support the Food & Drink Sector.
Food Safety Schemes (FSSs) are essential to the food and drink industry. FSSs provide the framework for compliance within the industry to assist in the production of safe and legal food. FSSs are differentiated by having their own criteria for...

Supporting small Welsh food and drink manufacturing businesses to obtain food safety certification will help to ensure the safety, security and integrity of the food supply chain, as well as enable growth of the food industry in Wales. The Food Innovation Wales “Barriers to Accreditation” report identified the potential barriers for Welsh manufacturers in obtaining certification. Although other research studies have identified potential barriers, few have explored suitable support mechanisms. None have implemented interventions to...