Phylogeography of racoons in France and Belgium with D-loop sequences. Racoon D-loop

Raccoons (Procyon lotor) are worldwide invaders, due to deliberate or accidental releases. In France, raccoons have currently established three expanding separate populations. We used wild and captive individuals sampled in France and Belgium to characterize the genetic diversity and current population genetic structure of French raccoon populations and identify potential genetic connectivity with the Belgium population using both mitochondrial D-loop sequences and microsatellite loci. Results confirm that French populations are the result of at least three independent introductions. The three populations display low genetic diversity and sign of recent bottleneck and they are still expanding.