Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8945-3623

Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Department

Wildlife and Fisheries Resources

Committee Chair

Amy Welsh

Committee Co-Chair

Christopher Ryan

Committee Member

Christopher Ryan

Committee Member

John Edwards

Abstract

Elk (Cervus canadensis) reintroductions have been common in the 20th and 21st centuries, yet 40% have failed to establish self-sustaining elk populations due to a lack of post-reintroduction demographic monitoring. Elk were reintroduced to West Virginia in 2016 following more than a century of absence after the species was extirpated in 1875. Elk were translocated to West Virginia from Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area (LBL) in eastern Kentucky and from Arizona. The two groups of elk differ in their subspecies, physiology, reintroduction history, connectivity, and habitat. Reintroductions create genetic risks such as the founder effect and genetic drift that can lower a population’s genetic diversity, possibly resulting in inbreeding, reduced immunocompetence, and reduced adaptive potential. The most significant cause of mortality in West Virginia’s elk population is Parelaphostrongylus tenuis, commonly known as meningeal worm or brain worm, a parasitic nematode affecting the central nervous system. Risks are amplified when two dissimilar sources are used, as within-cluster breeding bias can lead to isolation between them. To evaluate genetic risks in West Virginia elk, genomic differences between elk sourced from LBL and elk sourced from AZ were evaluated and parentage was assigned for elk born in West Virginia since the onset of the reintroduction. Double digest restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD) was used to identify sets of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to address questions of diversity, neutral and adaptive differences, and parentage in a sample of 156 elk. AZ elk had higher heterozygosity (p = 0.007), a greater effective population size (Ne), and higher genetic risk scores for susceptibility to meningeal worm-related mortality (p = 0.0006). LBL and AZ differed moderately in a set of neutral SNPs (FST = 0.11) and differed greatly at 80 putatively adaptive SNPs (FST = 0.76). Thirty-two genes were linked to proteins that may play a role in the genetic susceptibility of elk to meningeal worm. Parent pairs were identified for 43 of 59 elk born in West Virginia at 95% confidence. Of the total offspring pool, 51% were assigned one parent from each source population, indicating the absence of within-cluster breeding bias. Thirteen males sired these 43 offspring, 10 of which were sourced from LBL. There is a 1:1.69 ratio of mating males to mating females. Seventy-nine percent of offspring were sired by males between three and six years old, and the mean age of parents has increased since the initial translocation. Six females in this population mated as yearlings. The marked differences between LBL and AZ elk, especially LBL’s reduced genetic diversity and AZ’s increased susceptibility to meningeal worm, pose a threat to the population’s sustainability. The admixture between the groups mitigates this threat and potentially retains genetic diversity in the population’s future.

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