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Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa

Savannah elephant populations have been severely reduced and fragmented throughout its remaining range. In general, however, there is limited information regarding their genetic status, which is essential knowledge for conservation. We investigated patterns of genetic variation in savannah elephants...

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Autores principales: Santos, Teresa L., Fernandes, Carlos, Henley, Michelle D., Dawson, Deborah A., Mumby, Hannah S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31590388
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10100779
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author Santos, Teresa L.
Fernandes, Carlos
Henley, Michelle D.
Dawson, Deborah A.
Mumby, Hannah S.
author_facet Santos, Teresa L.
Fernandes, Carlos
Henley, Michelle D.
Dawson, Deborah A.
Mumby, Hannah S.
author_sort Santos, Teresa L.
collection PubMed
description Savannah elephant populations have been severely reduced and fragmented throughout its remaining range. In general, however, there is limited information regarding their genetic status, which is essential knowledge for conservation. We investigated patterns of genetic variation in savannah elephants from the Greater Kruger Biosphere, with a focus on those in previously unstudied nature reserves adjacent to Kruger National Park, using dung samples from 294 individuals and 18 microsatellites. The results of genetic structure analyses using several different methods of ordination and Bayesian clustering strongly suggest that elephants throughout the Greater Kruger National Park (GKNP) constitute a single population. No evidence of a recent genetic bottleneck was detected using three moment-based approaches and two coalescent likelihood methods. The apparent absence of a recent genetic bottleneck associated with the known early 1900s demographic bottleneck may result from a combination of rapid post-bottleneck population growth, immigration and long generation time. Point estimates of contemporary effective population size (N(e)) for the GKNP were ~ 500–700, that is, at the low end of the range of N(e) values that have been proposed for maintaining evolutionary potential and the current ratio of N(e) to census population size (N(c)) may be quite low (<0.1). This study illustrates the difficulties in assessing the impacts on N(e) in populations that have suffered demographic crashes but have recovered rapidly and received gene flow, particularly in species with long generation times in which genetic time lags are longer. This work provides a starting point and baseline information for genetic monitoring of the GKNP elephants.
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spelling pubmed-68268892019-11-18 Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa Santos, Teresa L. Fernandes, Carlos Henley, Michelle D. Dawson, Deborah A. Mumby, Hannah S. Genes (Basel) Article Savannah elephant populations have been severely reduced and fragmented throughout its remaining range. In general, however, there is limited information regarding their genetic status, which is essential knowledge for conservation. We investigated patterns of genetic variation in savannah elephants from the Greater Kruger Biosphere, with a focus on those in previously unstudied nature reserves adjacent to Kruger National Park, using dung samples from 294 individuals and 18 microsatellites. The results of genetic structure analyses using several different methods of ordination and Bayesian clustering strongly suggest that elephants throughout the Greater Kruger National Park (GKNP) constitute a single population. No evidence of a recent genetic bottleneck was detected using three moment-based approaches and two coalescent likelihood methods. The apparent absence of a recent genetic bottleneck associated with the known early 1900s demographic bottleneck may result from a combination of rapid post-bottleneck population growth, immigration and long generation time. Point estimates of contemporary effective population size (N(e)) for the GKNP were ~ 500–700, that is, at the low end of the range of N(e) values that have been proposed for maintaining evolutionary potential and the current ratio of N(e) to census population size (N(c)) may be quite low (<0.1). This study illustrates the difficulties in assessing the impacts on N(e) in populations that have suffered demographic crashes but have recovered rapidly and received gene flow, particularly in species with long generation times in which genetic time lags are longer. This work provides a starting point and baseline information for genetic monitoring of the GKNP elephants. MDPI 2019-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6826889/ /pubmed/31590388 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10100779 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Santos, Teresa L.
Fernandes, Carlos
Henley, Michelle D.
Dawson, Deborah A.
Mumby, Hannah S.
Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa
title Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa
title_full Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa
title_fullStr Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa
title_short Conservation Genetic Assessment of Savannah Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Greater Kruger Biosphere, South Africa
title_sort conservation genetic assessment of savannah elephants (loxodonta africana) in the greater kruger biosphere, south africa
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31590388
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10100779
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