Improving Trapping Efficiency for Control of American Mink (Neovison vison) in Patagonia

Two main challenges when controlling alien American mink (Neovison vison) in Patagonia are to maximize campaign efficacy and cost-effectiveness and to avoid trapping native species. We designed and tested new variants of collapsible wire box traps, compared the efficacy of a food-based bait and a scent lure and compared catch rates in different seasons of the year. We used the data to model the efficiency rate of the trapping and to determine the trapping effort required to remove 70–90% of the estimated discrete mink population. Between January 2018 and March 2021, we operated 59 trapping transects over 103 three-day trapping periods in southern Chile. Traps were first baited with canned fish, and afterwards with mink anal gland lure. We compared the efficacy of mink capture with that of our previous study. We trapped 196 mink (125 males, 71 females), with most captures in summer. The medium-sized GMV-18 trap caught more male mink, but the more compact GMV-13 caught fewer non-target rodents and no native mammals. The scent lure was more successful than the canned fish when the previous campaign’s data were included in the analysis. There was also a significant improvement in the proportion of female mink trapped and reduced labour compared with our previous campaign that used larger traps, fish bait and 400–500 m trap spacings. We caught relatively more females than males after the third night of trapping on a transect. Our data analysis supports the use of the GMV-13 variant of wire cage trap as the best trap size: it is effective on female mink, small, cheap and easy to transport. Combined with mink anal scent lure, it reduces the possibility of trapping native species compared with other traps tested in Chile. As the most efficient method for removing at least 70% of the estimated discrete mink population within the area covered by each trap transect in southern Chile tested to date, we recommend trapping campaigns using GMV-13 during summer, with a 200-m trap spacing, for up to 6 days before moving traps to a new site, with a combination of three days with a female scent gland lure, followed by three days with a male scent gland lure.

PSVIII-9 Genome assembly of American mink (Neovison vison) using high-fidelity long reads

Development of genome-enabled selection and providing new insights in the genetic architecture of economically important traits are essential parts of mink breeding programs. Availability of a contagious genome assembly would guarantee the fundamental genomic studies in American mink (Neovison vison). Advances in long-read sequencing technologies have provided the opportunity to obtain high quality and free-gaps assemblies for different species. The objective of this study was to generate an accurate genome assembly using Single Molecule High-Fidelity (HiFi) Sequencing for American mink. The whole genome sequences of 100 mink were analyzed to select the most homozygous individual. A black American mink from Millbank Fur Farm (Rockwood, ON, Canada) was selected for PacBio sequencing. The total number of 2,884,047 HiFi reads with the average size of 20 kb were generated using three libraries of PacBio Sequel II System. Three de novo assemblers including wtdbg, Flye and IPA were used to obtain the initial draft of assembly using the long reads. The draft generated using Flye was selected as the final assembly based on the metrics of contiguity and completeness. The final assembly included 3,529 contigs with the N50 of 18.26 Mb and the largest contig of 62.16 Mb. The length of genome assembly was 2.66 Gb with 85 gaps. These results confirmed that high-coverage and accurate long-reads significantly improved the American mink genome assembly and successfully generated more contagious assembly. The chromosome conformation capture data will be integrated to the current draft to obtain a chromosome-level genome assembly for American mink at the next step of the project.