Estimating the Effective Size of European Wolf Populations

Molecular methods are routinely used to estimate the effective size of populations (N_e). However, underlying model assumptions are frequently violated to an unknown extent. Although simulations can detect sources of bias and help to adjust sampling strategies and analyses methods, additional information from empirical data can also be used to calibrate methods and improve molecular N_e estimation methods. Here, we take advantage of long-term genetic and ecological monitoring data of the grey wolf (Canis lupus) in Germany, and detailed population genetic studies in Poland, Spain and Portugal to improve N_e estimation strategies in this species, and species with similar life history traits. We first calculated N_e from average lifetime reproductive success and detailed census data from the German population, which served as a baseline to compare to molecular estimates based on linkage disequilibrium and sibship frequency. This yielded a robust N_e/N_c estimation that we used to calibrate molecular estimates of German, Polish and Iberian wolf populations. The linkage disequilibrium method was strongly influenced by spatial genetic structure, much more than the sibship frequency method. When N_e was estimated in local neighbourhoods, both methods yielded comparable results. Estimates of the metapopulation effective size seemed to correspond generally well with the sum of the estimates of local neighbourhoods. Overall, we found that the number of packs is a good proxy of the effective population size. Using this as a rule of thumb, we evaluated for all European wolf populations the N_e 500 indicator and concluded that half of the European wolf populations do not yet fulfil this criterion.