Decomposing demographic contributions to the effective population size with moose as a case study
Autor: | Ivar Herfindal, Hallvard Haanes, Steinar Engen, Morten Heim, Stine Svalheim Markussen, Ane Marlene Myhre, Bernt-Erik Sæther, Knut Røed, Aline Magdalena Lee, Erling Johan Solberg |
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Jazyk: | angličtina |
Rok vydání: | 2020 |
Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine Male Population Biology 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences 03 medical and health sciences Effective population size Genetic drift Genetic variation Statistics Genetics Animals Sex Ratio education Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Demography Population Density education.field_of_study Ecology Population size Deer Reproduction Genetic Drift Covariance Mating system 030104 developmental biology Genetics Population Female Sex ratio |
Zdroj: | Molecular Ecology |
Popis: | Levels of random genetic drift are influenced by demographic factors, such as mating system, sex ratio and age structure. The effective population size (Ne) is a useful measure for quantifying genetic drift. Evaluating relative contributions of different demographic factors to Ne is therefore important to identify what makes a population vulnerable to loss of genetic variation. Until recently, models for estimating Ne have required many simplifying assumptions, making them unsuitable for this task. Here, using data from a small, harvested moose population, we demonstrate the use of a stochastic demographic framework allowing for fluctuations in both population size and age distribution to estimate and decompose the total demographic variance and hence the ratio of effective to total population size (Ne/N) into components originating from sex, age, survival and reproduction. We not only show which components contribute most to Ne/N currently, but also which components have the greatest potential for changing Ne/N. In this relatively long‐lived polygynous system we show that Ne/N is most sensitive to the demographic variance of older males, and that both reproductive autocorrelations (i.e., a tendency for the same individuals to be successful several years in a row) and covariance between survival and reproduction contribute to decreasing Ne/N (increasing genetic drift). These conditions are common in nature and can be caused by common hunting strategies. Thus, the framework presented here has great potential to increase our understanding of the demographic processes that contribute to genetic drift and viability of populations, and to inform management decisions. © 2019 The Authors. Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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