Lott Matthew J, Frankham Greta J, Eldridge Mark D B, Alquezar-Planas David E, Donnelly Lily, Zenger Kyall R, Leigh Kellie A, Kjeldsen Shannon R, Field Matt A, Lemon John, Lunney Daniel, Crowther Mathew S, Krockenberger Mark B, Fisher Mark, Neaves Linda E
Australian Museum Research Institute Sydney New South Wales Australia.
Molecular Ecology and Evolutionary Laboratory, College of Science and Engineering James Cook University Townsville Queensland Australia.
Ecol Evol. 2024 Jul 31;14(8):e11700. doi: 10.1002/ece3.11700. eCollection 2024 Aug.
Genetic management is a critical component of threatened species conservation. Understanding spatial patterns of genetic diversity is essential for evaluating the resilience of fragmented populations to accelerating anthropogenic threats. Nowhere is this more relevant than on the Australian continent, which is experiencing an ongoing loss of biodiversity that exceeds any other developed nation. Using a proprietary genome complexity reduction-based method (DArTSeq), we generated a data set of 3239 high quality Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) to investigate spatial patterns and indices of genetic diversity in the koala (), a highly specialised folivorous marsupial that is experiencing rapid and widespread population declines across much of its former range. Our findings demonstrate that current management divisions across the state of New South Wales (NSW) do not fully represent the distribution of genetic diversity among extant koala populations, and that care must be taken to ensure that translocation paradigms based on these frameworks do not inadvertently restrict gene flow between populations and regions that were historically interconnected. We also recommend that koala populations should be prioritised for conservation action based on the scale and severity of the threatening processes that they are currently faced with, rather than placing too much emphasis on their perceived value (e.g., as reservoirs of potentially adaptive alleles), as our data indicate that existing genetic variation in koalas is primarily partitioned among individual animals. As such, the extirpation of koalas from any part of their range represents a potentially critical reduction of genetic diversity for this iconic Australian species.
遗传管理是濒危物种保护的关键组成部分。了解遗传多样性的空间格局对于评估碎片化种群应对日益加剧的人为威胁的恢复力至关重要。这在澳大利亚大陆尤为重要，该国正在经历比其他任何发达国家都更为严重的生物多样性持续丧失。我们使用一种基于基因组复杂性降低的专有方法（DArTSeq），生成了一个包含3239个高质量单核苷酸多态性（SNP）的数据集，以研究考拉（一种高度特化的食叶有袋动物，在其大部分原有分布范围内正经历快速且广泛的种群数量下降）的遗传多样性空间格局和指标。我们的研究结果表明，新南威尔士州（NSW）目前的管理分区并未充分体现现存考拉种群间遗传多样性的分布情况，必须谨慎确保基于这些框架的迁移模式不会无意中限制历史上相互关联的种群和区域之间的基因流动。我们还建议，应根据考拉种群目前面临的威胁过程的规模和严重程度，对其保护行动进行优先排序，而不是过于强调它们的感知价值（例如，作为潜在适应性等位基因的储存库），因为我们的数据表明，考拉现有的遗传变异主要分布在个体动物之间。因此，考拉在其分布范围内任何区域的灭绝都可能意味着这个澳大利亚标志性物种的遗传多样性出现潜在的重大减少。
