A landscape genetics approach for quantifying the relative influence of historic and contemporary habitat heterogeneity on the genetic connectivity of a rainforest bird

Pavlacky, David C., Goldizen, Anne W., Prentis, Peter J., Nicholls, James A. and Lowe, Andrew J. (2009) A landscape genetics approach for quantifying the relative influence of historic and contemporary habitat heterogeneity on the genetic connectivity of a rainforest bird. Molecular Ecology, 18 14: 2945-2960.


Author Pavlacky, David C.
Goldizen, Anne W.
Prentis, Peter J.
Nicholls, James A.
Lowe, Andrew J.
Title A landscape genetics approach for quantifying the relative influence of historic and contemporary habitat heterogeneity on the genetic connectivity of a rainforest bird
Journal name Molecular Ecology  (ERA 2012 Listed)    (ERA 2010 Rank A)   Check publisher's open access policy
Publication date 2009-07
Sub-type Article
Year available 2009
DOI 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04226.x
Volume number 18
Issue number 14
ISSN 0962-1083: 1365-294x
Start page 2945
End page 2960
Total pages 16
Editor L. Rieseberg
Place of publication Oxford, United Kingdom
Publisher Blackwell Scientific
Collection year 2010
Language eng
Subject C1
060411 Population, Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics
970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences
Formatted abstract Landscape genetics is an important framework for investigating the influence of spatial pattern on ecological process. Nevertheless, the standard analytic frameworks in landscape genetics have difficulty evaluating hypotheses about spatial processes in dynamic landscapes. We use a predictive hypothesis-driven approach to quantify the relative contribution of historic and contemporary processes to genetic connectivity. By confronting genetic data with models of historic and contemporary landscapes, we identify dispersal processes operating in naturally heterogeneous and human-altered systems. We demonstrate the approach using a case study of microsatellite polymorphism and indirect estimates of gene flow for a rainforest bird, the logrunner (Orthonyx temminckii). Of particular interest was how much information in the genetic data was attributable to processes occurring in the reconstructed historic landscape and contemporary human-modified landscape. A linear mixed model was used to estimate appropriate sampling variance from nonindependent data and information-theoretic model selection provided strength of evidence for alternative hypotheses. The contemporary landscape explained slightly more information in the genetic differentiation data than the historic landscape, and there was considerable evidence for a temporal shift in dispersal pattern. In contrast, migration rates estimated from genealogical information were primarily influenced by contemporary landscape change. We discovered that landscape heterogeneity facilitated gene flow before European settlement, but contemporary deforestation is rapidly becoming the most important barrier to logrunner dispersal.
Keyword Coalescent theory
Effective dispersal
Gene flow
Habitat loss
Microsatellite DNA
Orthonyx temminckii
Q-Index Code C1
Q-Index Status Confirmed Code

 
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Created: Tue, 08 Dec 2009, 14:53:28 EST by Hayley Ware on behalf of School of Biological Sciences