Population differentiation and historical demography of the threatened snowy plover Charadrius nivosus (Cassin, 1858)
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Published version
Date
2020-06
Authors
D’Urban Jackson, Josephine
Bruford, Michael W.
Székely, Tamas
DaCosta, Jeffrey M.
Sorenson, Michael D.
Russo, Isa-Rita M.
Maher, Kathryn H.
Cruz-López, Medardo
Galindo-Espinosa, Daniel
Palacios, Eduardo
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
J. D’Urban Jackson, M.W. Bruford, T. Székely, J.M. DaCosta, M.D. Sorenson, I.-.R.M. Russo, K.H. Maher, M. Cruz-López, D. Galindo-Espinosa, E. Palacios, A.E. De Sucre-Medrano, J. Cavitt, R. Pruner, A.L. Morales, O. Gonzalez, T. Burke, C. Küpper. 2020. "Population differentiation and historical demography of the threatened snowy plover Charadrius nivosus (Cassin, 1858)." Conservation Genetics, Volume 21, Issue 3, pp. 387 - 404. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-020-01256-8
Abstract
Delineating conservation units is a complex and often controversial process that is particularly challenging for highly vagile species. Here, we reassess population genetic structure and identify those populations of highest conservation value in the threatened snowy plover (Charadrius nivosus, Cassin, 1858), a partial migrant shorebird endemic to the Americas. We use four categories of genetic data—mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), microsatellites, Z-linked and autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)—to: (1) assess subspecies delineation and examine population structure (2) compare the sensitivity of the different types of genetic data to detect spatial genetic patterns, and (3) reconstruct demographic history of the populations analysed. Delineation of two traditionally recognised subspecies was broadly supported by all data. In addition, microsatellite and SNPs but not mtDNA supported the recognition of Caribbean snowy plovers (C. n. tenuirostris) and Floridian populations (eastern C. n. nivosus) as distinct genetic lineage and deme, respectively. Low migration rates estimated from autosomal SNPs (m < 0.03) reflect a general paucity of exchange between genetic lineages. In contrast, we detected strong unidirectional migration (m = 0.26) from the western into the eastern nivosus deme. Within western nivosus, we found no genetic differentiation between coastal Pacific and inland populations. The correlation between geographic and genetic distances was weak but significant for all genetic data sets. All demes showed signatures of bottlenecks occurring during the past 1000 years. We conclude that at least four snowy plover conservation units are warranted: in addition to subspecies nivosus and occidentalis, a third unit comprises the Caribbean
tenuirostris lineage and a fourth unit the distinct eastern nivosus deme.
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The Author(s) 2020. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.