Andre Moura

Muzeum i Instytut Zoologii PAN · Stacja Ornitologiczna

The emergence of Brucella infections in marine mammals is a growing concern. The present study reports two cases of systemic Brucella pinnipedialis infection detected in bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ) pair stranded together in the Cantabrian coast of Spain. Both animals showed systemic lesions associated with the Brucella infection, mor...

Accurate description of population structure and genetic connectivity is essential for efficient conservation efforts. Along the European coastline, Tursiops truncatus typically shows high site fidelity to relatively small areas, often semi-enclosed waters, but patterns of genetic connectivity among such areas are often poorly understood. In this s...

Skull shape analysis provides useful information on wildlife ecology and potential local adaptations. Common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) often differentiate between coastal and offshore populations worldwide, and skull shape analyses can be particularly useful in this context. Here we quantify skull shape variation between coastal popu...

On 15 March 2021, a male Hexanchus griseus was incidentally captured by a commercial bottom trawler at 550-730 m depth in the Gulf of Valencia (Spain). The specimen measured 251.8 cm in total length, weighed 86.2 kg and its reproductive system was fully developed, characterizing it as the smallest mature male bluntnose sixgill shark recorded in the...

Accurate description of population structure and genetic connectivity is essential for efficient conservation efforts. Along the European coastline, Tursiops truncatus typically shows high site fidelity to relatively small areas, often semi-enclosed waters, but patterns of genetic connectivity among such areas are often poorly understood. In this s...

Citizen science data are becoming increasingly relevant in wildlife studies, especially when obtaining data requires costly logistics. In the Arabian/Persian Gulf, baseline information about cetaceans is scarce despite their regular presence. From 2012 to 2019, a citizen science campaign conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) obtained informat...

Introgressive hybridisation between domestic animals and their wild relatives is an indirect form of human-induced evolution, altering gene pools and phenotypic traits of wild and domestic populations. Although this process is well documented in many taxa, its evolutionary consequences are poorly understood. In this study, we assess introgression p...

Common Bottlenose Dolphin Tursiops truncatus Mediterranean subpopulation has most recently been assessed for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2021. Tursiops truncatus Mediterranean subpopulation is listed as Least Concern. (Accessed on 12 January 2023, https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/16369383/215248781)

Phylogeographic inference has provided extensive insight into the relative roles of geographical isolation and ecological processes during evolutionary radiations. However, the importance of cross-lineage admixture in facilitating adaptive radiations is increasingly being recognised, and suggested as a main cause of phylogenetic uncertainty. In thi...

Este capítulo explica a metodologia utilizada na construção do Atlas de Mamíferos de Portugal (2ª edição).

Este capítulo introduz a 2ª edição do Atlas de Mamíferos de Portugal.

Este atlas reúne e cartografa os dados de distribuição disponíveis dos mamíferos selvagens (excepto morcegos) recolhidos em Portugal entre 1990 e 2018.

Desde que se tenha em conta as limitações inerentes à prospeção não sistemática e à natureza incompleta dos dados, é possível fazer análises biogeográficas preliminares da informação recolhida. Este capítulo apresenta as tendências gerais na diversidade observada, tendo em conta a variação espacial no esforço de amostragem, bem como mapas de ignorâ...

The evolutionary relationships between extinct and extant lineages provide important insight into species’ response to environmental change. The grey wolf is among the few Holarctic large carnivores that survived the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, responding to that period’s profound environmental changes with loss of distinct lineages an...

This dataset represents an extensive collection of available (published or contributed, often opportunistically collected) occurrence data of terrestrial mammals (except bats) on Portuguese UTM 10x10-km cells, and it is the first at this scale for this country. It can be useful for biogeographical and macroecological analyses in regions that includ...

The Atlas of Mammals of Portugal compiles the most up-to-date and finest-resolution distribution database of Portuguese terrestrial and marine mammals (except bats) across the country (mainland and islands) and its Exclusive Economic Zone. The inclusion of marine mammals, which are often left out of mammal atlases, is of particular relevance in thi...

Atlas of Portuguese mammals, providing an update of their Iberian distribution

Phylogeography can provide insight into the potential for speciation and identify geographic regions and evolutionary processes associated with species richness and evolutionary endemism. In the marine environment, highly mobile species sometimes show structured patterns of diversity, but the processes isolating populations and promoting differenti...

http://atlas-mamiferos.uevora.pt/index.php/atlas/livro/

Social structure plays a crucial role in determining a species’ dispersal patterns and genetic structure. Cetaceans show a diversity of social and mating systems, but their effects on dispersal and genetic structure are not well known, in part because of technical difficulties in obtaining robust observational data. Here, we combine genetic profili...

Este atlas nasceu no seio de um projeto de investigação exploratória concedido no âmbito do programa Investigador FCT (sucessor do programa Ciência). O projeto inclui a análise de padrões biogeográficos dos vertebrados terrestres da Europa Ocidental, com especial incidência na Península Ibérica. Em contraste com os restantes grupos taxonómicos e pa...

Foote and Morin (2016) reanalyse data published in our recent RADseq studies (Moura et al., 2014a, 2015) to address questions about the likelihood of differentiation in sympatry among killer whale populations in the North Pacific. However, they describe a demic version of sympatric differentiation, requiring reproductive isolation to evolve by ‘eco...

Domesticated species are often composed of distinct populations differing in the character and strength of artificial and natural selection pressures, providing a valuable model to study adaptation. In contrast to pure-breed dogs that constitute artificially maintained inbred lines, free-ranging dogs are typically free-breeding, i.e., unrestrained...

Although a large part of the global domestic dog population is free-ranging and free-breeding, knowledge of genetic diversity in these free-breeding dogs (FBDs) and their ancestry relations to pure-breed dogs is limited, and the indigenous status of FBDs in Asia is still uncertain. We analyse genome-wide SNP variability of FBDs across Eurasia, and...

An official journal of the Genetics Society, Heredity publishes high-quality articles describing original research and theoretical insights in all areas of genetics. Research papers are complimented by News & Commentary articles and reviews, keeping researchers and students abreast of hot topics in the field.

The drivers of population differentiation in oceanic high dispersal organisms, have been crucial for research in evolutionary biology. Adaptation to different environments is commonly invoked as a driver of differentiation in the oceans, in alternative to geographic isolation. In this study, we investigate the population structure and phylogeograph...

The drivers of population differentiation in oceanic dispersal organisms have been crucial for research in evolutionary biology. Adaptation to different environments is commonly invoked as an alternative to geographic isolation, as a driver of differentiation in the oceans. In this study, we investigate the population structure and phylogeography o...

Number of samples used in this study by predefined population. Table S2 Demographic estimates from ∂a∂i for the MI/AT/OS analysis. Table S3 Demographic estimates from ∂a∂i for the AT/OS/AR analysis. Table S4 Model comparisons for order of population splitting for the MI, AT, OS analysis. Table S5 Model comparisons for order of population splitting...

The evolution of diversity in the marine ecosystem is poorly understood, given the relatively high potential for connectivity, especially for highly mobile species such as whales and dolphins. The killer whale (Orcinus orca) has a worldwide distribution, and individual social groups travel over a wide geographic range. Even so, regional populations...

For many highly mobile species, the marine environment presents few obvious barriers to gene flow. Even so, there is considerable diversity within and among species, referred to by some as the 'marine speciation paradox'. The recent and diverse radiation of delphinid cetaceans (dolphins) represents a good example of this. Delphinids are capable of...

European wolf (Canis lupus) populations have suffered extensive decline and range contraction due to anthropogenic culling. In Bulgaria, although wolves are still recovering from a severe demographic bottleneck in the 1970s, hunting is allowed with few constraints. A recent increase in hunting pressure has raised concerns regarding long-term viabil...

Ecosystem function and resilience is determined by the interactions and independent contributions of individual species. Apex predators play a disproportionately determinant role through their influence and dependence on the dynamics of prey species. Their demographic fluctuations are thus likely to reflect changes in their respective ecological co...

Understanding the evolution of diversity and the resulting systematics in marine systems is confounded by the lack of clear boundaries in oceanic habitats, especially for highly mobile species like marine mammals. Dolphin populations and sibling species often show differentiation between coastal and offshore habitats, similar to the pelagic/littora...

Despite the scarcity of geographical barriers in the ocean environment, delphinid cetaceans often exhibit marked patterns of population structure on a regional scale. The European coastline is a prime example, with species exhibiting population structure across well-defined environmental boundaries. Here we undertake a comprehensive population gene...

Cetaceans represent an evolutionary lineage marked by drastic morphological and physiological changes during their adaptation to an exclusively marine existence. In addition, several cetacean species exhibit geographical ranges that encompass different marine environments, with genetic breaks being sometimes consistent with environmental breaks. As...

Cetaceans are difficult to observe in the wild, and demand complex logistics for dedicated collection of biological data. As such, the distribution of most cetacean species is still poorly understood. Ecological niche models are useful in studying species distributions and their ecological determinants, and platforms of opportunity (e.g. commercial...