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The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages
Conservation of ecological communities requires deepening our understanding of genetic diversity patterns and drivers at community-wide scales. Here, we use seascape genetic analysis of a diversity metric, allelic richness (AR), for 47 reef species sampled across 13 Hawaiian Islands to empirically d...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4855387/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27122569 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.0354 |
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author | Selkoe, Kimberly A. Gaggiotti, Oscar E. Treml, Eric A. Wren, Johanna L. K. Donovan, Mary K. Toonen, Robert J. |
author_facet | Selkoe, Kimberly A. Gaggiotti, Oscar E. Treml, Eric A. Wren, Johanna L. K. Donovan, Mary K. Toonen, Robert J. |
author_sort | Selkoe, Kimberly A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Conservation of ecological communities requires deepening our understanding of genetic diversity patterns and drivers at community-wide scales. Here, we use seascape genetic analysis of a diversity metric, allelic richness (AR), for 47 reef species sampled across 13 Hawaiian Islands to empirically demonstrate that large reefs high in coral cover harbour the greatest genetic diversity on average. We found that a species's life history (e.g. depth range and herbivory) mediates response of genetic diversity to seascape drivers in logical ways. Furthermore, a metric of combined multi-species AR showed strong coupling to species richness and habitat area, quality and stability that few species showed individually. We hypothesize that macro-ecological forces and species interactions, by mediating species turnover and occupancy (and thus a site's mean effective population size), influence the aggregate genetic diversity of a site, potentially allowing it to behave as an apparent emergent trait that is shaped by the dominant seascape drivers. The results highlight inherent feedbacks between ecology and genetics, raise concern that genetic resilience of entire reef communities is compromised by factors that reduce coral cover or available habitat, including thermal stress, and provide a foundation for new strategies for monitoring and preserving biodiversity of entire reef ecosystems. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4855387 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48553872016-05-05 The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages Selkoe, Kimberly A. Gaggiotti, Oscar E. Treml, Eric A. Wren, Johanna L. K. Donovan, Mary K. Toonen, Robert J. Proc Biol Sci Research Articles Conservation of ecological communities requires deepening our understanding of genetic diversity patterns and drivers at community-wide scales. Here, we use seascape genetic analysis of a diversity metric, allelic richness (AR), for 47 reef species sampled across 13 Hawaiian Islands to empirically demonstrate that large reefs high in coral cover harbour the greatest genetic diversity on average. We found that a species's life history (e.g. depth range and herbivory) mediates response of genetic diversity to seascape drivers in logical ways. Furthermore, a metric of combined multi-species AR showed strong coupling to species richness and habitat area, quality and stability that few species showed individually. We hypothesize that macro-ecological forces and species interactions, by mediating species turnover and occupancy (and thus a site's mean effective population size), influence the aggregate genetic diversity of a site, potentially allowing it to behave as an apparent emergent trait that is shaped by the dominant seascape drivers. The results highlight inherent feedbacks between ecology and genetics, raise concern that genetic resilience of entire reef communities is compromised by factors that reduce coral cover or available habitat, including thermal stress, and provide a foundation for new strategies for monitoring and preserving biodiversity of entire reef ecosystems. The Royal Society 2016-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4855387/ /pubmed/27122569 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.0354 Text en © 2016 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Selkoe, Kimberly A. Gaggiotti, Oscar E. Treml, Eric A. Wren, Johanna L. K. Donovan, Mary K. Toonen, Robert J. The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
title | The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
title_full | The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
title_fullStr | The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
title_full_unstemmed | The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
title_short | The DNA of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
title_sort | dna of coral reef biodiversity: predicting and protecting genetic diversity of reef assemblages |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4855387/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27122569 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.0354 |
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