Conservation Genomics Reveals Low Connectivity Among Populations of Threatened Roseate Terns in the Atlantic Basin [PREPRINT].
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Resource type
Journal article
Date published
December 22, 2021
Abstract
While the effects of barriers to dispersal such as population declines, habitat fragmentation, and geographic distance have been well-documented in terrestrial wildlife, factors impeding the dispersal of highly vagile taxa such as seabirds are less well understood. The roseate tern ( ) is a globally distributed seabird species, but populations tend to be both fragmented and small, and the species is declining across most of its range. Within the Atlantic Basin, past work has shown differentiation among roseate terns breeding on different continents, but these results were generated with a limited number of microsatellite markers. Relationships between breeding populations in the Northwestern Atlantic and the Caribbean have never been analyzed. We evaluated population structuring of roseate tern populations in North America and the Azores using both microsatellite markers and single-nucleotide polymorphisms generated through targeted sequencing of Ultra-conserved Elements. For both marker types, we found significant genetic differentiation among all 3 populations and evidence for moderate contemporary unidirectional gene flow from the Caribbean to the Azores, but not among other populations. Within the Caribbean metapopulation, we found high rates of unidirectional migration from the Virgin Islands to Florida, potentially indicative of movement from source population to sink or an artifact of dispersal among other unsampled populations in the Caribbean region. These observations have significance for species persistence in the Atlantic, as our results suggest that loss of genetic diversity within populations is unlikely to be buffered by inflow of new alleles from other breeding populations.
Funder
| Funder name | Awards |
National Science Foundation, United States | Graduate Research Fellowship Program grant no. 1650114 |
Smithsonian Institution, United States | Short term visitor award |
Geological Society of America, United States | Ecosystems Mission Area |
David S. Lee Fund for the Conservation of Caribbean Birds | |
USVI Division of Fish and Wildlife | Cays Restoration & Research Grant VI-W-F17AF01314 |
Journal title
Conservation Genetics
Publisher
Research Square Platform LLC
Place of publication
Massachusetts, US
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In Copyright