Genomic recovery lag in Urocyon littoralis

With continued global change, recovery of species listed under the Endangered Species Act is increasingly challenging. One rare success was the recovery and delisting of the Channel Island fox (Urocyon littoralis) after 90-99% population declines in the 1990s. While their demographic recovery was marked, less is known about their genetic recovery. To address these genetic changes, we conducted the first multi-individual and population-level direct genetic comparison of samples collected before and after the recent bottlenecks. This study demonstrates that species conservation is more complex than population size and that some island fox populations are not yet "out of the woods".