A CENTURY OF GENETIC CHANGE AND METAPOPULATION DYNAMICS IN THE GALÁPAGOS WARBLER FINCHES (CERTHIDEA)

Populations that are connected by immigrants play an important role in evolutionary and conservation biology, yet we have little direct evidence of how such metapopulations change genetically over evolutionary time. We compared historic (1894-1906) to modern (1988-2006) genetic variation in 11 popul...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolution 2011-11, Vol.65 (11), p.3148-3161
Main Authors: Farrington, Heather L., Petren, Kenneth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal Migration
Animals
Biological variation
Birds
Conservation biology
Ecuador
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Evolutionary biology
Evolutionary genetics
Finches
Finches - genetics
Gene flow
Gene Frequency
Genetic diversity
Genetic loci
genetic monitoring
Genetic Variation
Genetics, Population
Human migration
Immigration
Microsatellite Repeats - genetics
museum specimens
Museums
natural history collections
Population Dynamics
Population genetics
Population size
Principal Component Analysis
SSR
Warblers
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Summary:Populations that are connected by immigrants play an important role in evolutionary and conservation biology, yet we have little direct evidence of how such metapopulations change genetically over evolutionary time. We compared historic (1894-1906) to modern (1988-2006) genetic variation in 11 populations of warbler finches at 14 microsatellite loci. Although several lines of evidence suggest that Darwin's finches may be in decline, we found that the genetic diversity of warbler finches has not generally declined, and broad-scale patterns of variation remained similar over time. Contrary to expectations, inferred population sizes have generally increased over time (6-8%) as have immigration rates (8-16%), which may reflect a recent increase in the frequency and intensity of El Nino events. Individual island populations showed significant declines (18-19%) and also substantial gains (18-20%) in allelic richness over time. Changes in genetic diversity were correlated with changes in immigration rates, but did not correspond to population size or human disturbance. These results reflect the expected stabilizing properties of whole metapopulations over time. However, the dramatic and unpredictable changes observed in individual populations during this short time interval suggests that care should be taken when monitoring individual population fragments with snapshots of genetic variation.
ISSN:0014-3820
1558-5646
DOI:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01385.x