Research Institute for Veterinary Science and Conservation Genome Resource Bank for Korean Wildlife, College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.
Department of Forest Sciences, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, South Korea.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 28;11(1):9193. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-88238-z.
The Korean Peninsula, located at the southern tip of Northeast Asia, has never been covered by ice sheets and was a temperate refugium during the Pleistocene. Karsenia koreana, the sole Asian plethodontid salamander species, occurs only on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula and is thought to have found various climatic refugia. Despite its phylogenetic and biogeographic importance, no population-level genetic analysis has been performed on this species. Here we study the population genetic structure of K. koreana using mitochondrial and microsatellite loci to understand the recent historical dispersion process that shaped its current distribution. Overall, the genetic distance between populations correlated well with the spatial distance, and the genetic structure among populations showed signs of a unilateral northward expansion from a southernmost refugium population. Given the distinct genetic structure formed among the populations, the level of historical gene flow among populations appears to have been very low. As the estimated effective population size of K. koreana was also small, these results suggest that the small, restricted populations of K. koreana are extremely vulnerable to environmental changes that may require high levels of genetic diversity to cope with. Thus, special management strategies are needed to preserve these remnant populations.
朝鲜半岛位于东北亚的最南端，从未被冰川覆盖，在更新世是一个温带避难所。朝鲜石龙子是亚洲唯一的有肺螈科蝾螈物种，仅出现在朝鲜半岛的南半部，被认为在各种气候避难所中找到了栖息地。尽管它在系统发育和生物地理学上具有重要意义，但尚未对该物种进行种群水平的遗传分析。在这里，我们使用线粒体和微卫星基因座研究了 K. koreana 的种群遗传结构，以了解塑造其当前分布的最近历史扩散过程。总的来说，种群之间的遗传距离与空间距离很好地相关，种群之间的遗传结构显示出从最南端避难所种群向北单向扩张的迹象。鉴于种群之间形成的独特遗传结构，种群之间的历史基因流水平似乎非常低。由于 K. koreana 的估计有效种群规模也很小，这些结果表明，K. koreana 的小而受限的种群对可能需要高水平遗传多样性来应对的环境变化极其脆弱。因此，需要采取特殊的管理策略来保护这些残余种群。
