TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluating the genome-wide impacts of species translocations
T2 - the greater prairie-chicken as a case study
AU - Capel, Samantha L.R.
AU - Bouzat, Juan L.
AU - Catchen, Julian M.
AU - Johnson, Jeff A.
AU - Dunn, Peter O.
AU - Paige, Ken N.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Charlie Johnson, Richard Metz, and the rest of the Texas A&M Agrilife Research team for conducting library construction and sequencing for this work as well as the National Science Foundation and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for funding. We also thank Wendy Schelsky and Al Roca for their constructive feedback along with Angle Rivera-Colón for methodological support. Additional financial support was provided by the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior and the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Funding Information:
Funding for the work presented was provided by the National Science Foundation through the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Research Grant (Award number: NSF DBI 20-22129) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Administrative Research Funds to Ken N. Paige.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - A variety of conservation management strategies have been developed to address rapid, anthropogenically-driven biodiversity loss. The translocation of individuals from viable populations to those experiencing significant decline is one such strategy to increase genetic diversity and avoid extirpation, yet efficacy of this strategy has rarely been examined in detail utilizing genomic data. Here, we employ a conservation icon, the greater prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus), as a case study to demonstrate how genome-wide SNPs derived from RADseq offer the ability to assess translocation success with respect to the genomic aspects of genetic restoration, encompassing (1) the alleviation of inbreeding (2) the restoration of evolutionary potential, and (3) the maintenance of local variation. Genome-wide diversity estimates calculated from 356,778 SNPs demonstrate that translocations rescued the Illinois population from severe inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity, restoring variation to levels comparable to the three non-bottlenecked source populations. Delineation of genetic structure using non-linked and ubiquitously genotyped SNPs reveal distinct genetic variation among the source and recipient populations as well as high levels of admixture in the post-translocation population resulting from translocations. Estimated ancestry derived from private alleles uncover introgression of unique variation from each source population as well as the maintenance of substantial levels of variation unique to Illinois. Our findings demonstrate that genome-wide analysis of variation is a valuable management tool for measuring the genomic effects of translocations and, subsequently, gauging genetic restoration success.
AB - A variety of conservation management strategies have been developed to address rapid, anthropogenically-driven biodiversity loss. The translocation of individuals from viable populations to those experiencing significant decline is one such strategy to increase genetic diversity and avoid extirpation, yet efficacy of this strategy has rarely been examined in detail utilizing genomic data. Here, we employ a conservation icon, the greater prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus), as a case study to demonstrate how genome-wide SNPs derived from RADseq offer the ability to assess translocation success with respect to the genomic aspects of genetic restoration, encompassing (1) the alleviation of inbreeding (2) the restoration of evolutionary potential, and (3) the maintenance of local variation. Genome-wide diversity estimates calculated from 356,778 SNPs demonstrate that translocations rescued the Illinois population from severe inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity, restoring variation to levels comparable to the three non-bottlenecked source populations. Delineation of genetic structure using non-linked and ubiquitously genotyped SNPs reveal distinct genetic variation among the source and recipient populations as well as high levels of admixture in the post-translocation population resulting from translocations. Estimated ancestry derived from private alleles uncover introgression of unique variation from each source population as well as the maintenance of substantial levels of variation unique to Illinois. Our findings demonstrate that genome-wide analysis of variation is a valuable management tool for measuring the genomic effects of translocations and, subsequently, gauging genetic restoration success.
KW - Conservation
KW - Genetic restoration
KW - Greater prairie-chicken
KW - Population genomics
KW - RADseq
KW - Translocations
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U2 - 10.1007/s10592-021-01412-8
DO - 10.1007/s10592-021-01412-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85118533816
SN - 1566-0621
VL - 23
SP - 179
EP - 191
JO - Conservation Genetics
JF - Conservation Genetics
IS - 1
ER -