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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Polar bears are inbreeding as their icy home disintegrates

With climate change fracturing northern ice, the bears have begun to lose genetic diversity.
Polar bear mother and cub standing on ice.

A polar bear and her yearling cub in Svalbard, Norway, where the knock-on effects of climate change are sapping the bears’ genetic diversity. Credit: Andy Rouse/Nature Picture Library

Polar bears in Norway have undergone a staggering loss in genetic diversity in recent decades, as a result of the decline of Arctic sea ice.

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Nature 597, 306 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02438-1

References

  1. Maduna, S. N. et al. Proc. R. Soc. B 288, 20211741 (2021).

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