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Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity

Urbanization may restrict, facilitate, or have no effect on gene flow, depending on the organism and extent of urbanization. In human commensals, with high dispersal ability, urbanization can facilitate gene flow by providing continuous suitable habitat across a wide range. Additionally, suburban or...

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Autores principales: Carlen, Elizabeth, Munshi‐South, Jason
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7819573/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33519962
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12972
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author Carlen, Elizabeth
Munshi‐South, Jason
author_facet Carlen, Elizabeth
Munshi‐South, Jason
author_sort Carlen, Elizabeth
collection PubMed
description Urbanization may restrict, facilitate, or have no effect on gene flow, depending on the organism and extent of urbanization. In human commensals, with high dispersal ability, urbanization can facilitate gene flow by providing continuous suitable habitat across a wide range. Additionally, suburban or rural areas with lower human population density may act as a barrier to gene flow for these human commensals. Spatial population genetic approaches provide a means to understand genetic connectivity across geographically expansive areas that encompass multiple metropolitan areas. Here, we examined the spatial genetic patterns of feral pigeons (Columba livia) living in cities in the eastern United States. We focused our sampling on the Northeastern megacity, which is a region covering six large cities (Boston, Providence, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC). We performed ddRAD‐Seqon 473 samples, recovered 35,200 SNPs, and then used multiple evolutionary clustering analyses to investigate population structuring. These analyses revealed that pigeons formed two genetic clusters—a northern cluster containing samples from Boston and Providence and a southern cluster containing all other samples. This substructuring is possibly due to reduced urbanization across coastal Connecticut that separates Boston and Providence from New York and mid‐Atlantic cities. We found that pairs of pigeons within 25 km are highly related (Mantel r = 0.217, p = .001) and that beyond 50 km, pigeons are no more related than they would be at random. Our analysis detected higher‐than‐expected gene flow under an isolation by distance model within each city. We conclude that the extreme urbanization characteristic of the Northeastern megacity is likely facilitating gene flow in feral pigeons.
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spelling pubmed-78195732021-01-29 Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity Carlen, Elizabeth Munshi‐South, Jason Evol Appl Special Issue Original Articles Urbanization may restrict, facilitate, or have no effect on gene flow, depending on the organism and extent of urbanization. In human commensals, with high dispersal ability, urbanization can facilitate gene flow by providing continuous suitable habitat across a wide range. Additionally, suburban or rural areas with lower human population density may act as a barrier to gene flow for these human commensals. Spatial population genetic approaches provide a means to understand genetic connectivity across geographically expansive areas that encompass multiple metropolitan areas. Here, we examined the spatial genetic patterns of feral pigeons (Columba livia) living in cities in the eastern United States. We focused our sampling on the Northeastern megacity, which is a region covering six large cities (Boston, Providence, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC). We performed ddRAD‐Seqon 473 samples, recovered 35,200 SNPs, and then used multiple evolutionary clustering analyses to investigate population structuring. These analyses revealed that pigeons formed two genetic clusters—a northern cluster containing samples from Boston and Providence and a southern cluster containing all other samples. This substructuring is possibly due to reduced urbanization across coastal Connecticut that separates Boston and Providence from New York and mid‐Atlantic cities. We found that pairs of pigeons within 25 km are highly related (Mantel r = 0.217, p = .001) and that beyond 50 km, pigeons are no more related than they would be at random. Our analysis detected higher‐than‐expected gene flow under an isolation by distance model within each city. We conclude that the extreme urbanization characteristic of the Northeastern megacity is likely facilitating gene flow in feral pigeons. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC7819573/ /pubmed/33519962 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12972 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Evolutionary Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Special Issue Original Articles
Carlen, Elizabeth
Munshi‐South, Jason
Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity
title Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity
title_full Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity
title_fullStr Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity
title_full_unstemmed Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity
title_short Widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the Northeastern megacity
title_sort widespread genetic connectivity of feral pigeons across the northeastern megacity
topic Special Issue Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7819573/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33519962
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/eva.12972
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