Wieslaw Bogdanowicz

• Prof. dr. hab.
• Head of the Dept. of Mol. & Biometr. Tech. at Polish Academy of Sciences

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...

In the first continent-wide study of the golden jackal (Canis aureus), we characterised its population genetic structure and attempted to identify the origin of European populations. This provided a unique insight into genetic characteristics of a native carnivore population with rapid large-scale expansion. We analysed 15 microsatellite markers an...

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...

To contribute to the complete mitogenome database of the species Canis lupus familiaris and shed more light on its origin, we have sequenced mitochondrial genomes of 120 modern dogs from worldwide populations. Together with all the previously published mitogenome sequences of acceptable quality, we have reconstructed a global phylogenetic tree of 5...

Background: Reliable taxonomy underpins communication in all of biology, not least nature conservation and sustainable use of ecosystem resources. The flexibility of taxonomic interpretations, however, presents a serious challenge for end-users of taxonomic concepts. Users need standardised and continuously harmonised taxonomic reference systems,...

Background Treponemal diseases are a significant global health risk, presenting challenges to public health and severe consequences to individuals if left untreated. Despite numerous genomic studies on Treponema pallidum and the known possible biases introduced by the choice of the reference genome used for mapping, few investigations have addresse...

Simple Summary This study explores the genetic diversity of the casein gene cluster, a key component in milk protein production, across various Bovidae species, including cattle, buffaloes, and antelopes. The lack of genetic data for wild bovids hampers the understanding of milk protein expression and the improvement of dairy breeds. The researcher...

One of the most fascinating mammalian range expansions in Europe involves an opportunistic mesocarnivore―the golden jackal ( Canis aureus ). However, key questions about the origins and dispersal strategies of pioneering individuals, likely the first to establish new populations, remain unanswered. We analyzed genetic data from three golden jackals...

The current rapid climate change and human-induced alteration of landscapes and animal communities have led to range expansions in numerous species, raising concerns about potential negative impacts on genetic diversity, biotic interactions and hybridization with related species in newly colonized areas, and the need to adjust management plans. The...

A rapid and extensive range expansion of the golden jackal has recently been documented in continental Europe, raising new policy and legal questions and creating an urgent need to understand the mechanisms underlying this distribution change. Because of human persecution, the jackal population in Greece went through a serious bottleneck and is the...

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster initiated a series of catastrophic events resulting in long-term and widespread environmental contamination. We characterize the genetic structure of 302 dogs representing three free-roaming dog populations living within the power plant itself, as well as those 15 to 45 kilometers from the disaster site. Genome-w...

Background Treponemal diseases pose significant global health risks, presenting severe challenges to public health due to their serious health impacts if left untreated. Despite numerous genomic studies on Treponema pallidum and the known possible biases introduced by the choice of the reference genome used for mapping, few investigations have addr...

Successful conservation depends on accurate taxonomy. Currently, the taxonomy of canids in Africa, Eurasia and Australasia is unstable as recent molecular and morphological studies have questioned earlier phenetic classifications. We review available information on several taxa of Old World and Australasian Canis with phylogenetic uncertainties (na...

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...

Bats provide numerous ecosystem services as they pollinate, disperse seeds, and reduce insect populations. It is thus vital to monitor and understand their foraging habits. We analyzed sterols and stanols in a rare discovery of a ∼4,300‐year‐old bat guano deposit from a Jamaican cave to infer relative changes in bat feeding guilds over four millenn...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03328-2.

The territory of former Eastern Poland formed part of the wider ethno-cultural frontier developed between Polish Mazovia and Turovian Rus’ and Volhynia between the second half of the 10th and the second half of the 13th century. Overall, its mosaic-like cultural landscape was formed by the traditional, pagan background and Christian influences refl...

Simple Summary Hedgehogs, being insectivores with slow metabolisms, are quite sensitive to temperature and food availability. As a consequence, their ranges have oscillated in relation to past climate changes. Species that have evolved in different regions, but their ranges have shifted and overlapped subsequently, often represent intense competito...

The maritime expansion of Scandinavian populations during the Viking Age (about ad 750–1050) was a far-flung transformation in world history1,2. Here we sequenced the genomes of 442 humans from archaeological sites across Europe and Greenland (to a median depth of about 1×) to understand the global influence of this expansion. We find the Viking pe...

The discovery of two undisturbed caves in Jamaica with 14 C and 210 Pb dating indicating that the oldest layers of guano were ca. 200 years old in the first cave (81 cm long core), and as much as 4300 years old in the second cave (129 cm long core) provides exciting possibilities to examine past ecological communities. We analyzed genetic and polle...

Small mammals that are specialists in homeothermic thermoregulation reduce their self-maintenance costs of normothermy to survive the winter. By contrast, heterothermic ones that are considered generalists in thermoregulation can lower energy expenditure by entering torpor. It is well known that different species vary the use of their strategies to...

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...

Bats are excellent ecological indicators because they are long-lived, globally distributed, and show predictable responses to environmental stressors. Unaltered bat guano deposits, although rare, can serve as environmental archives to reveal changes in dietary patterns over millennial time scales. We inferred changes in agricultural and industrial...

The Viking maritime expansion from Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) marks one of the swiftest and most far-flung cultural transformations in global history. During this time (c. 750 to 1050 CE), the Vikings reached most of western Eurasia, Greenland, and North America, and left a cultural legacy that persists till today. To understand the...

Heldmaier’s seasonal acclimatization model predicts that, given their high relative level of energy expenditure, small non-hibernating mammals focus on energy conservation for as long as winter conditions prove unfavorable. They achive a lowering of energy requirements by winter-time reduction of body size/mass, and thus of the basal metabolic rate...

Theoretical modelling predicts that the thermoregulatory strategies of endothermic animals range from those represented by thermal generalists to those characteristic for thermal specialists. While the generalists tolerate wide variations in body temperature (Tb), the specialists maintain Tb at a more constant level. The model has gained support fr...

We monitored foraging insectivorous bats along walked transects in forest and farmland at Arabuko-Sokoke Forest in coastal Kenya, using a heterodyne bat detector. The main purpose was to test whether aerial-hawking insectivorous bats that feed in open places (in this case mostly Scotophilus and Scotoecus spp.) show lunar phobia, i.e. restricting th...

In many mammalian species, variation in body temperature (Tb) exceeds the values suitable for defining homeothermy, making it justifiable and even necessary to resort to the term heterothermic. However, Tb data are only available for ca. 1% of extant mammalian species. We investigated variations in Tb in wild free-living and experimentally food-dep...

Provisional clustering of the abstracts, external use (Corresponding Authors) Legend: First letter= the day of presentation, 2nd digit = the session, 3rd or 3rd and 4th digits =the order, next letter = type of presentation (K Keynote, C oral communication, P poster), digits after letter = duration. Example: W110C5 Wednesday in the first session,...

Significance The majority of viral genomic sequences available today are fewer than 50 years old. Parvovirus B19 (B19V) is a ubiquitous human pathogen causing fifth disease in children, as well as other conditions. By isolating B19V DNA from human remains between ∼0.5 and 6.9 thousand years old, we show that B19V has been associated with humans for...

Activity-dependent expression of immediate-early genes (IEGs) is induced by exposure to odor. The present study was designed to investigate whether there is differential expression of IEGs (Egr-1, C-fos) in the brain region mediating olfactory memory in the Indian greater short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx We assumed that differential expressi...

Today, one of the challenges facing modern biology is to develop an accurate, reliable and cost- efficient method for the rapid identification of organisms to species level. Here, we combine high resolution melting (HRM) analysis with DNA barcoding (Bar-HRM) and evaluated its efficiency to discriminate between 215 specimens of 22 common European cy...

The Great evening bat Ia io Thomas, 1902, previously considered as an endemic to the Indochinese subregion, is reported from the Sundaic subregion for the first time based on specimens collected from three localities in Surat Thani Province and Phang Nga Province, peninsular Thailand. It is described herein as a new subspecies based on its substant...

The wasp spider Argiope bruennichi (Scopoli, 1772) is of Mediterranean-Pontian origin, but for decades it has been expanding northwards, including into the territory of Poland. Based on well-documented expansion records, we can distinguish "old" (south-eastern and south-western) and "new" populations (north-eastern), respectively, from the 1930s to...

The Soviet Union played the leading role in fish introductions in Eurasia. However, only 3% of all introductions prior to 1978 gave a commercial benefit. One of the noteworthy examples appears to be the Sevan trout (Salmo ischchan Kessler, 1877)—an endemic salmonid of Lake Sevan in Armenia. This species has been introduced to Kirghizstan, Kazakhsta...

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009;...

This plot is not part of the published stance but derives from it. The plot shows the number of authors by geographic region (courtesy of Dr. Diego Astua).

While the hazel grouse Tetrastes bonasia declined in the twentieth century to the point where certain local subpopulations in Poland disappeared altogether, the overall population of the species in the country now seems to be back on the increase. To consider the remaining genetic diversity in that population, analyses of a fragment of the hypervar...

A new species of Rhinolophus in the pusillus group is described from Ratchaburi, Kamphaeng Phet and Loei Provinces where it was found in evergreen forest at elevations ranging from 550 to 1,320 m a.s.l. It is distinguished from R. shortridgei and other similar species in the same group by its broad, parallel-sided sella, which is squared-off at the...

Bats are currently killed in large numbers at wind turbines worldwide, but the ultimate reason why this happens remains poorly understood. One hypothesis is that bats visit wind turbines to feed on insects exposed at the turbine towers. We used single molecule next generation DNA sequencing to identify stomach contents of 18 bats of four species (P...

We conducted a set of playback experiments aimed at understanding whether distress-call structure in the greater short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx is specific in encoding information relating to stress that attracts conspecifics. We tested the specificity by playing their distress call and its modified version at a foraging site for free-rang...

The Phoridae are a family of small, hump-backed flies, dominating in post-fire areas. Some of these flies are probably able to survive a fire as an egg, larva, or pupa, and may be adapted to the fire-altered environment at the genomic level. In this study, we describe the influence of short-term temperature treatment on the expression of seven heat...

Golden Jackal Informal Study Group in Europe (GOJAGE) and Jackal Ecology Task Force (JETF) in Central and SE Europe do not consider the golden jackal to be an invasive alien species in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus and NE Ukraine.

Poles speak not Anserine but a tongue of their own. In: “To what he read” by Mikołaj Rej (1562) There are more than 5,700 species of wild mammals worldwide, but only 800 of them have Polish names. „Polish names of mammals of the world” is a proposal to supplement, improve and standardize the list based on the knowledge of biology, especially taxono...

The present study considers the genetic structure and phylogeography of the smooth snake (Coronella austriaca) in Central Europe, as analyzed on the basis of 14 microsatellite markers and a 284-bp fragment of cytochrome b. We found deep divergence between western and south-eastern Poland, suggesting at least two different colonization routes for Ce...

Keywords: Chiroptera; cryptic taxa; glacial refugium; mtDNA; species diversity. The Mediterranean Basin is typified by a high degree of species rarity and endemicity that reflects its position, geomorphology, and history. Although the composition and cryptic variation of the bat faunas from the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas are relatively well stu...

The Mediterranean Basin is typified by a high degree of species rarity and endemicity that reflects its position, geomorphology, and history. Although the composition and cryptic variation of the bat faunas from the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas are relatively well studied, data from the Apennine Peninsula are still incomplete. This is a significan...

Invasive species usually go through a period of reduced genetic variability due to a bottleneck. The genetic constitution of an invading population should therefore reflect the time since invasion and the number of introduction events. We studied genetic population structure of three rat species occurring sympatrically on the island of Futuna (46 k...

A Late Viking-Age Elite Cemetary in Central Poland: Bodzia is one of the most fascinating archaeological discoveries of the post-war period in Poland. It is one of the few cemeteries in Poland from the time of the origins of the Polish state. The unique character of this discovery is mainly due to the fact that a small, elite population was buried...

Despite continuous historical distribution of the grey wolf (Canis lupus) throughout Eurasia, the species displays considerable morphological differentiation that resulted in delimitation of a number of subspecies. However, these morphological discontinuities are not always consistent with patterns of genetic differentiation. Here we assess genetic...

In a stressful situation, greater short-nosed fruit bats (Cynopterus sphinx) emit audible vocalization either to warn or to inform conspecifics. We examined the effect of distress calls on bats emitting the call as well as the bats receiving the distress signal through analysis of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and catacholaminargic system...

Thermal gradients along changes in elevation in mountainous environments are reflected by different biotas. Although there have been studies of elevation variation in bat assemblages in summer, winter changes in the same gradients remain unknown. The objective of this study was to document changes in the species composition of bats hibernating in c...

Measurements of the 33 surveyed caves and number of hibernating bats. Abbreviations: Rhip – Rhinolophus hipposideros, Mmyo – Myotis myotis, Mmys s.l. – M. mystacinus sensu lato, Enil – Eptesicus nilssonii, Paur – Plecotus auritus, Unident. – unidentified. (DOC)

The serotine bat, Eptesicus serotinus is the most frequently rabies-infected (European bat lyssavirus 1-type, EBLV-1) bat species in Europe. To confirm Lyssavirus infection of this bat in Poland, we tested for the presence of rabies virus RNA from oropharyngeal swabs using RT-PCR. There was a 0.9% (two out of 212 individuals) level of infection wit...

This article provides morphological and molecular characteristics of Punctodera stonei Brzeski, 1998. Comparison of partial sequences of 18S and 28S rDNA genes from P. stonei sampled in Poland and Punctodera sp. from Canada showed their 100% similarity. This is the first report on the occurrence of P. stonei outside of Europe. We provide data on mo...

i4Life provides linkages between the Catalogue of Life, an expert based knowledge portal for living species on earth, and global partners (IUCN, GBIF, ENA at EBI, BOLD, EoL, and Life Watch) providing data portals for distribution, genetic diversity and conservation information. This novel e-infrastructure offers the only single global consensus lis...

Rats are major reservoirs of leptospirosis and considered as a main threat to biodiversity. A recent introduction of Rattus rattus to the island of Futuna (Western Polynesia) provided the opportunity to test if a possible change in species composition of rat populations would increase the risk of leptospirosis to humans. We trapped rodents on Walli...

Southern elephant seals Mirounga leonina migrate seasonally between pelagic foraging areas in the Southern Ocean and breeding and moulting sites on subantarctic islands. Here we characterized genetic diversity of the elephant seal moulting colony from King George Island (KGI), South Shetlands Archipelago, in comparison with breeding colonies descri...

During our study, we compared three commercially available extraction methods for extraction of DNA from five ancient bone samples (approximately 1,000 years old). In one case both tooth and bone samples were available from a single individual. The DNA extraction kits used were QIAamp® DNA Micro Kit (Qiagen), Wizard® Genomic DNA Purification Kit (P...

The large Myotis complex in continental Europe, Asia Minor, and Transcaucasia comprises two sibling bat species, the greater mouse-eared bat, Myotis myotis, and the lesser mouse-eared bat, Myotis blythii, also referred to as Myotis oxygnathus. Here, we investigate the phylogeography of these bats using two mitochondrial markers: the second hypervar...

During late summer and early autumn in temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, thousands of bats gather at caves, mainly for the purpose of mating. We demonstrated that this swarming behavior most probably leads not only to breeding among bats of the same species but also interbreeding between different species. Using 14 nuclear microsatellites...

Microsatellite genotypes. The ‘ID’ column is an individual identifier. Subsequent columns provide species abreviations (Sp.) and genotypes for the 14 autosomal microsatellite loci as nominal sizes in base pairs. Mys – M. mystacinus, Bra – M. brandtii, Alc – M. alcathoe. Please note that the gender has been noted in all captured bats but this inform...

Two European species of the Diomedeoididae, an extinct family of procellariiform (tube-nose) birds, have hitherto been distinguished primarily by size of their limb bones. Here, we describe an Early Oligocene (Rupelian) procellariifom coracoid that in all probability represents the larger species, Diomedeoides lipsiensis, and compare it to the cora...

The discovery that the most widespread bat in Europe comprises cryptic species, Pipistrellus pipistrellus (Schreber, 1774) (common pipistrelle) and Pipistrellus pygmaeus (Leach, 1825) (soprano pipistrelle), provides a great opportunity to look at the mechanism of species coexistence. Based on eight nuclear microsatellite loci (n = 353), we observed...

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