Eva Bellemain

• ARGALY

A ce jour, les diagnostics environnementaux dans le domaine des sites et sols pollués (SSP) évaluent principalement la qualité d’un sol par le biais d’analyses physico-chimiques. Sur cette base, des volumes et surfaces conséquents de sol sont déclarés « pollués » et traités comme tel sans que l’on connaisse réellement leur écotoxicité associée, ni...

Pour accélérer la recherche et l'innovation dans la requalification durable des friches tout en intégrant divers enjeux socio-écosystémiques, un living lab dédié aux sols a été créé en 2014 dans la métropole de Grenoble Alpes. En dix ans, ce living lab a permis des avancées significatives en recherche opérationnelle, telles que la biotransformation...

To accelerate research and innovation in the sustainable redevelopment of brownfields while addressing various socio-ecosystemic challenges, a dedicated soil living lab was established in 2020 in the Grenoble Alpes metropolitan area (France). Over four years, this living lab has enabled significant advances in operational research, such as the biot...

Description de la phase pilote et la phase d'inventaire du projet IRRAE "Inventaire des raies et des requins autour de La Réunion à partir d’analyses d’ADN environnemental avec une approche écosystémique (élasmobranches et poissons osseux) ".

French: Ce projet se divise en deux volets (Figure A). Le premier volet, appelé étude pilote, avait pour objectif d'optimiser une méthode non invasive, reproductible et standardisée pour réaliser l'inventaire et le suivi des requins autour de La Réunion, tout en complétant cette approche par une analyse écosystémique incluant les autres élasmobran...

Innovative techniques, such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, are now promoting broader biodiversity monitoring at unprecedented scales, because of the reduction in time, presumably lower cost, and methodological efficiency. Our goal was to assess the efficiency of established inventory techniques (live‐trapping grids, pitfall traps, camer...

Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...

Although anecdotally associated with local bears (Ursus arctos and U. thibetanus), the exact identity of ‘hominid’-like creatures important to folklore and mythology in the Tibetan Plateau–Himalaya region is still surrounded by mystery. Recently, two purported yeti samples from the Himalayas showed genetic affinity with an ancient polar bear, sugge...

Polar bear conservation relies upon scientific knowledge about their populations. However, polar bear population monitoring is challenging due to enormous bear home ranges, remote settings, and extreme climatic conditions that limit access by researchers. Many studies use costly and invasive methods (e.g., chemical immobilization from helicopters),...

Pressures on freshwater biodiversity in Southeast Asia are accelerating, yet the status and conservation needs of many of the region’s iconic fish species are poorly known. The Mekong is highly species diverse and supports four of the six largest freshwater fish globally, three of which, including Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), are Cri...

Global biodiversity in freshwater and the oceans is declining at high rates. Reliable tools for assessing and monitoring aquatic biodiversity, especially for rare and secretive species, are important for efficient and timely management. Recent advances in DNA sequencing have provided a new tool for species detection from DNA present into the enviro...

De Noordse woelmuis (Microtus oeconomus arenicola) is een belangrijke Natura 2000-soort waarvoor regelmatig inventarisaties worden verricht in het kader van Flora- en faunawet ontheffingen en landelijke monitoringverplichtingen. Traditioneel wordt geïnventariseerd met inloopvallen, een arbeidsintensieve en daardoor relatief dure methode. De Zoogdie...

Sympatric species are expected to minimize competition by partitioning resources, espe-cially when these are limited. Herbivores inhabiting the High Arctic in winter are a prime ex-ample of a situation where food availability is anticipated to be low, and thus reduced diet overlap is expected. We present here the first assessment of diet overlap of...

Mate choice is thought to contribute to the maintenance of the spectacularly high polymorphism of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes, along with balancing selection from parasites, but the relative contribution of the former mechanism is debated. Here, we investigated the association between male MHC genotype and mating success in the...

The precise knowledge of species distribution is a key step in conservation biology. However, species detection can be extremely difficult in many environments, at specific life stages and in populations at very low densities. In recent years the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) has been proposed in order to overcome the limits of classical survey a...

Introduction The environmental DNA method (abbreviation: eDNA method) is a relatively new approach used to monitor the distribution of species. Using this method it is possible to detect species without actually seeing or catching them. The method uses DNA-based identification, also called barcoding, to detect species from extracellular DNA, or cel...

Although it is generally agreed that the Arctic flora is among the youngest and least diverse on Earth, the processes that shaped it are poorly understood. Here we present 50 thousand years (kyr) of Arctic vegetation history, derived from the first large-scale ancient DNA metabarcoding study of circumpolar plant diversity. For this interval we also...

Het in kaart brengen van de verspreiding van kleine zoogdieren vergt doorgaans een grote inspanning. Voor soorten die (deels) in het water leven is er sinds kort een nieuwe efficiënte methode: environmental DNA (eDNA). Deze methode maakt gebruik van het feit dat alle diersoorten DNA achterlaten in het water waarin ze verblijven. Door watermonsters...

Lemmings are key herbivores in many arctic food webs and their population dynamics have major impacts on the functioning of tundra systems. However, current knowledge of lemming diet is limited, hampering evaluation of lemming-vegetation interactions. This lack of knowledge is mainly due to methodological challenges, as previously used microhistolo...

Environmental DNA (afgekort eDNA) is een nieuwe inventarisatiemethode, gebaseerd op de detectie van DNA dat door soorten in hun omgeving wordt achtergelaten. Sinds de eerste publicatie over het gebruik van eDNA bij Amerikaanse brulkikkers in 2008, volgen de ontwikkelingen zich in rap tempo op. Wat is er reeds mogelijk met environmental DNA en wat n...

The taxonomic and ecological diversity of ancient fungal communities was assessed by combining next generation sequencing and metabarcoding of DNA preserved in permafrost. Twenty-six sediment samples dated 16 000-32 000 radiocarbon years old from two localities in Siberia were analysed for fungal ITS. We detected 75 fungal OTUs from 21 orders repre...

The bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) has been well studied throughout the Caribbean region from a phylogenetic perspective. However, data concerning the population genetics and long-term demography of this bird species are lacking. In this study, we focused on three populations within the Lesser Antilles and one on Puerto Rico and assessed genetic and...

1. Alien invasive species (AIS) are one of the major causes of biodiversity loss and global homogenization. Once an AIS becomes established, costs of control can be extremely high and complete eradication is not always achieved. The ability to detect a species at a low density greatly improves the success of eradication and decreases both the costs...

Metabarcoding approaches use total and typically degraded DNA from environmental samples to analyse biotic assemblages and can potentially be carried out for any kinds of organisms in an ecosystem. These analyses rely on specific markers, here called metabarcodes, which should be optimized for taxonomic resolution, minimal bias in amplification of...

Analyses of degraded DNA are typically hampered by contamination, especially when employing universal primers such as commonly used in environmental DNA studies. In addition to false-positive results, the amplification of contaminant DNA may cause false-negative results because of competition, or bias, during the PCR. In this study, we test the uti...

Estimating population size and trends are key issues in the conservation and management of large carnivores. The rebounding brown bear Ursus arctos population in Sweden is monitored by two different systems, both relying on voluntary resources. Population estimates have been calculated using Capture-Mark-Recapture methods, based on DNA-based scat s...

ABSTRACT • We review the genetics research that has been conducted on the European brown bear Ursus arctos, one of the genetically best-studied mammalian species. • The first genetics studies on European brown bears were on phylogeography, as a basis for proposed population augmentations. Two major mitochondrial DNA lineages, western and eastern, a...

During the last 15 years the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of nuclear DNA has been used as a target for analyzing fungal diversity in environmental samples, and has recently been selected as the standard marker for fungal DNA barcoding. In this study we explored the potential amplification biases that various commonly utilized ITS primers might...

We used microsatellite marker data taken from Scandinavian brown bear (Ursus arctos) tissue samples collected by hunters and biologists to estimate population genetic parameters important for bear management. Specifically, we show evidence of a small effective population size (N̂e = 44.8; 95% CI: 30.9 to 73.2) and low rates of immigration (m̂ = 0.0...

In this paper, we characterise three sex-specific genes (ZFX/Y, SRY, AMLX/Y) for all eight extant bear species and propose a new, robust and accurate molecular procedure to identify the sex of bears from non-invasive samples and fossil remains. These materials contain tiny amounts of poorly preserved deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), leaving Polymerase...

The development of DNA barcoding (species identification using a standardized DNA sequence), and the availability of recent DNA sequencing techniques offer new possibilities in diet analysis. DNA fragments shorter than 100-150 bp remain in a much higher proportion in degraded DNA samples and can be recovered from faeces. As a consequence, by using...

Ecologists have, up to now, widely regarded colonization of islands from continents as a one-way journey, mainly because of widely accepted assertions that less diverse island communities are easier to invade. However, continents present large targets and island species should be capable of making the reverse journey, considering they are the direc...

Table 1. Blood and tissue samples used in this study with sampling locations, geographical coordinates and Genbank accession numbers for each sequenced gene. For nuclear genes, each accession numbers corresponds to an allele sequence. NA stands for "none available" (a clean sequence could not be obtained), NS for "not sequenced", numbers beginning...

Table 2. Molecular characterization of the mitochondrial and nuclear genes in Coereba flaveola.

The bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) is a small nectivorous and frugivorous emberizine bird (order Passeriformes) that is an abundant resident throughout the Caribbean region. We used multi-gene analyses to investigate the evolutionary history of this species throughout its distribution in the West Indies and in South and Middle America. We sequenced...

The population concept is central in evolutionary and conservation biology, but identifying the boundaries of natural populations is often challenging. Here, we present a new approach for assessing spatial genetic structure without the a priori assumptions on the locations of populations made by adopting an individual-centred approach. Our method i...

We studied male yearly reproductive success (YRS) and its determinants (phenotypic characteristics, age, population density) in two Scandinavian brown bear populations, using molecular techniques to determine paternity. We found a significant difference in male YRS between the study areas, with lower YRS in the south than in the north. In general,...

The population concept is central in evolutionary and conservation biology, but identifying the boundaries of natural populations is often challenging. Here, we present a new approach for assessing spatial genetic structure without the a priori assumptions on the locations of populations made by adopting an individual‐centred approach. Our method i...

Asian bears face major threats due to the impact of human activities as well as a critical lack of knowledge about their status, distribution and needs for survival. Once abundant in northern Pakistan, the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) has been exterminated in most of its former distribution range. It presently occurs sparsely, in...

In noninvasive studies, the intersample variance in DNA quality and quantity is large, and produces multilocus genotypes of highly variable quality. Here we propose a standardized method for testing the reliability of the genotyping procedure when using the multiple-tube approach. The quality indexes generated will allow reliable comparisons among...

Estimates of population size and density are essential for successful management and conservation of any species. Although there are a variety of methods available for estimating abundance and density of populations, most studies rely on only one estimator and very few studies have compared and critically evaluated the adequacy and the cost of thes...

Based on the sexually selected infanticide (SSI) hypothesis, infanticide can be an adaptive mating strategy for males, but this is has rarely been documented in non-social mammals. This phenomenon should not benefit females, so one would expect females to evolve mating counter strategies in order to protect their infants from infanticidal males. Ca...

Although genotyping errors affect most data and can markedly influence the biological conclusions of a study, they are too often neglected. Errors have various causes, but their occurrence and effect can be limited by considering these causes in the production and analysis of the data. Procedures that have been developed for dealing with errors in...

Because of differential investment in gametes between sexes, females tend to be the more selective sex. Based on this concept, we investigate mate selection in a large carnivore: the brown bear (Ursus arctos). We hypothesize that, in this species with sexually selected infanticide (SSI), females may be faced with a dilemma: either select a high-qua...

Noninvasive genetic methods can be used to estimate animal abundances and offer several advantages over conventional methods. Few attempts have been made, however, to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the estimates. We compared four methods of estimating population size based on fecal sampling. Two methods used rarefaction indices and two were...

Kin-related social structure may influence reproductive success and survival and, hence, the dynamics of populations. It has been documented in many gregarious animal populations, but few solitary species. Using molecular methods and field data we tested: (1) whether kin-related spatial structure exists in the brown bear (Ursus arctos), which is a...

This report summarizes results of the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project obtained during 2000-04. The specific results relevant for the Large Carnivore and Society Project (RoSa) funded by the Research Council of Norway are the following. 1) We have documented the dispersal behavior of young male and female bears. We found, for the first time...

Genotyping errors occur when the genotype determined after molecular analysis does not correspond to the real genotype of the individual under consideration. Virtually every genetic data set includes some erroneous genotypes, but genotyping errors remain a taboo subject in population genetics, even though they might greatly bias the final conclusio...

This thesis deals with the application of molecular tools, combined with field data, in wildlife management, in conservation and in understanding species' biology and behavior. We used the brown bear (Ursus arctos) as a model species and the Scandinavian bear population as a case study. The first part of this thesis is a methodological part, in whi...

We redesigned new microsatellite primers and one sex-specific primer for amplification of faecal DNA from brown bears (Ursus arctos). We also combined a semi-nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with a newly developed multiplex preamplification method in order to increase the quality of the amplified DNA fragments. In comparison with a convention...

We reanalysed the spatial structure of the Scandinavian brown bear (Ursus arctos) population based on multilocus genotypes. We used data from a former study that had presumed a priori a specific population subdivision based on four subpopulations. Using two independent methods (neighbour-joining trees and Bayesian assignment tests), we analysed the...