Data from: "Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) transcriptome assembly and SNP discovery" in Genomic Resources Notes accepted 1 August 2013-30 September 2013

• Main Authors: Malenfant, René M., Coltman, David L., Richardson, Evan S., Lunn, Nicholas J., Davis, Corey S.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Conservation Genetics; Ecological Genetics; Mammals; Climate Change; Population Genetics - Empirical; Quantitative Genetics; Hudson Bay; Canada; Hudson; Churchill; Sea ice; Ursus maritimus; Wapusk national park
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10255/dryad.53190; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.606j6

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in the Western Hudson Bay subpopulation have been declining in size and body condition for decades, as climate change causes earlier sea ice breakup, reduced hunting time on the ice, and an increasingly long fasting season. As Western Hudson Bay females have decreased in size, rates of litter production and average litter size have also decreased, while cub mortality and average time to independence have increased. Although these changes have potential evolutionary consequences, little is yet known about the adaptive genetic variation in body size or fat accumulation that would have to underlie any such change. In this study, we used high-throughput Illumina sequencing to develop SNPs from pooled blood and fat transcriptomes, using samples from five adult female polar bears and five (unrelated) dependent cubs. In total, we generated 371,258 transcripts of which 36,755 were deemed to be “full length” (i.e., covered more than 90% of their best BLAST hit), and we identified 63,020 SNPs. Since this study was conducted, we have used a subset of these SNPs to develop an Illumina BeadArray for quantitative genetics research in Western Hudson Bay.