Comparison of historical bottleneck effects and genetic consequences of re‐introduction in a critically endangered island passerine
2013
Re-introduction is an important tool for recovering endangered species; however, the magnitude of genetic consequences for re-introduced populations remains largely unknown, in particular the relative impacts of historical
population bottleneckscompared to those induced by conservation management. We characterize 14 microsatellite loci developed for the
Seychelles paradise flycatcherand use them to quantify temporal and spatial measures of genetic variation across a 134-year time frame encompassing a historical
bottleneckthat reduced the species to ~28 individuals in the 1960s, through the initial stages of recovery and across a second contemporary conservation-introduction-induced
bottleneck. We then evaluate the relative impacts of the two
bottlenecks, and finally apply our findings to inform broader re-introduction strategy. We find a temporal trend of significant decrease in standard measures of
genetic diversityacross the historical
bottleneck, but only a nonsignificant downward trend in number of alleles across the contemporary
bottleneck. However, accounting for the different timescales of the two
bottlenecks(~40 historical generations versus <1 contemporary generation), the loss of
genetic diversityper generation is greater across the contemporary
bottleneck. Historically, the
flycatcherpopulation was genetically structured; however, extinction on four of five islands has resulted in a homogeneous contemporary population. We conclude that severe historical
bottleneckscan leave a large footprint in terms of sheer quantity of
genetic diversitylost. However, severely depleted
genetic diversitydoes not render a species immune to further
genetic erosionupon re-introduction. In some cases, the loss of
genetic diversityper generation can, initially at least, be greater across re-introduction-induced
bottlenecks.
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