Centro Para El Estudio de Sistemas Marinos, CONICET, Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Argentina.
Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medio Ambiente, CONICET, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, San Carlos de Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina.
PLoS One. 2024 Apr 18;19(4):e0301004. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301004. eCollection 2024.
The genetic identification of evolutionary significant units and information on their connectivity can be used to design effective management and conservation plans for species of concern. Despite having high dispersal capacity, several seabird species show population structure due to both abiotic and biotic barriers to gene flow. The Kelp Gull is the most abundant species of gull in the southern hemisphere. In Argentina it reproduces in both marine and freshwater environments, with more than 100,000 breeding pairs following a metapopulation dynamic across 140 colonies in the Atlantic coast of Patagonia. However, little is known about the demography and connectivity of inland populations. We aim to provide information on the connectivity of the largest freshwater colonies (those from Nahuel Huapi Lake) with the closest Pacific and Atlantic populations to evaluate if these freshwater colonies are receiving immigrants from the larger coastal populations. We sampled three geographic regions (Nahuel Huapi Lake and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts) and employed a reduced-representation genomic approach to genotype individuals for single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Using clustering and phylogenetic analyses we found three genetic groups, each corresponding to one of our sampled regions. Individuals from marine environments are more closely related to each other than to those from Nahuel Huapi Lake, indicating that the latter population constitutes the first freshwater Kelp Gull colony to be identified as an evolutionary significant unit in Patagonia.
遗传鉴定进化显著单元及其连通性信息可用于设计有效的管理和保护措施，以保护关注物种。尽管具有较高的扩散能力，但由于生物和非生物因素对基因流动的阻碍，一些海鸟物种仍表现出种群结构。黑背鸥是南半球数量最多的鸥。在阿根廷，它在海洋和淡水环境中繁殖，在巴塔哥尼亚大西洋沿岸的 140 个繁殖地中有超过 10 万对繁殖对，遵循着准种群动态。然而，内陆种群的种群动态和连通性知之甚少。我们旨在提供最大淡水繁殖地（纳韦尔瓦皮湖的繁殖地）与最近的太平洋和大西洋种群的连通性信息，以评估这些淡水繁殖地是否正在接收来自更大沿海种群的移民。我们在三个地理区域（纳韦尔瓦皮湖、大西洋和太平洋海岸）进行了采样，并采用简化基因组方法对个体进行单核苷酸多态性（SNP）基因分型。通过聚类和系统发育分析，我们发现了三个遗传群体，每个群体对应于我们采样的一个区域。来自海洋环境的个体彼此之间的亲缘关系比来自纳韦尔瓦皮湖的个体更密切，这表明后者是巴塔哥尼亚地区第一个被确定为进化显著单元的淡水黑背鸥繁殖地。
