Dellinger Justin A, Gustafson Kyle D, Gammons Daniel J, Ernest Holly B, Torres Steven G
California Department of Fish and Wildlife Sacramento California USA.
Department of Biological Sciences Arkansas State University Jonesboro Arkansas USA.
Ecol Evol. 2020 Sep 1;10(19):10687-10696. doi: 10.1002/ece3.6723. eCollection 2020 Oct.
Jointly considering the ecology (e.g., habitat use) and genetics (e.g., population genetic structure and diversity) of a species can increase understanding of current conservation status and inform future management practices. Previous analyses indicate that mountain lion () populations in California are genetically structured and exhibit extreme variation in population genetic diversity. Although human development may have fragmented gene flow, we hypothesized the quantity and quality of remaining habitat available would affect the genetic viability of each population. Our results indicate that area of suitable habitat, determined via a resource selection function derived using 843,500 location fixes from 263 radio-collared mountain lions, is strongly and positively associated with population genetic diversity and viability metrics, particularly with effective population size. Our results suggested that contiguous habitat of ≥10,000 km may be sufficient to alleviate the negative effects of genetic drift and inbreeding, allowing mountain lion populations to maintain suitable effective population sizes. Areas occupied by five of the nine geographic-genetic mountain lion populations in California fell below this habitat threshold, and two (Santa Monica Area and Santa Ana) of those five populations lack connectivity to nearby populations. Enhancing ecological conditions by protection of greater areas of suitable habitat and facilitating positive evolutionary processes by increasing connectivity (e.g., road-crossing structures) might promote persistence of small or isolated populations. The conservation status of suitable habitat also appeared to influence genetic diversity of populations. Thus, our results demonstrate that both the area and status (i.e., protected or unprotected) of suitable habitat influence the genetic viability of mountain lion populations.
综合考虑一个物种的生态（如栖息地利用）和遗传学（如种群遗传结构和多样性），可以增进对当前保护状况的了解，并为未来的管理实践提供依据。先前的分析表明，加利福尼亚州的美洲狮种群在遗传上是结构化的，并且在种群遗传多样性方面表现出极大的差异。尽管人类发展可能使基因流动碎片化，但我们推测剩余可用栖息地的数量和质量会影响每个种群的遗传活力。我们的研究结果表明，通过使用来自263只佩戴无线电项圈的美洲狮的843,500个定位点推导的资源选择函数确定的适宜栖息地面积，与种群遗传多样性和活力指标密切正相关，尤其是与有效种群大小。我们的结果表明，≥10,000平方公里的连续栖息地可能足以减轻遗传漂变和近亲繁殖的负面影响，使美洲狮种群能够维持适宜的有效种群大小。加利福尼亚州九个地理遗传美洲狮种群中有五个所占据的区域低于这一栖息地阈值，并且这五个种群中的两个（圣莫尼卡地区和圣安娜）与附近种群缺乏连通性。通过保护更大面积的适宜栖息地来改善生态条件，并通过增加连通性（如修建道路交叉结构）来促进积极的进化过程，可能会促进小种群或孤立种群的存续。适宜栖息地的保护状况似乎也会影响种群的遗传多样性。因此，我们的研究结果表明，适宜栖息地的面积和状况（即受保护或未受保护）都会影响美洲狮种群的遗传活力。
