Past climate change drives current genetic structure of an endangered freshwater mussel species

Abstract

Historical-to-recent climate change and anthropogenic disturbance affect species distributions and genetic structure. The Rio Grande watershed of the United States and Mexico encompasses ecosystems that are intensively exploited, resulting in substantial degradation of aquatic habitats. While significant anthropogenic disturbances in the Rio Grande are recent, inhospitable conditions for freshwater organisms likely existed prior to such disturbances. A combination of anthropogenic and past climate factors may contribute to current distributions of aquatic fauna in the Rio Grande basin. We used mitochondrial DNA and 18 microsatellite loci to infer evolutionary history and genetic structure of an endangered freshwater mussel, Popenaias popeii, throughout the Rio Grande drainage. We estimated spatial connectivity and gene flow across extant populations of P. popeii and used ecological niche models (ENMs) and approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) to infer its evolutionary history during the Pleistocene. structure results recovered regional and local population clusters in the Rio Grande. ENMs predicted drastic reductions in suitable habitat during the last glacial maximum. ABC analyses suggested that regional population structure likely arose in this species during the mid-to-late Pleistocene and was followed by a late Pleistocene population bottleneck in New Mexico populations. The local population structure arose relatively recently, perhaps due to anthropogenic factors. Popenaias popeii, one of the few freshwater mussel species native to the Rio Grande basin, is a case study for understanding how both geological and anthropogenic factors shape current population genetic structure. Conservation strategies for this species should account for the fragmented nature of contemporary populations.

Joint species models reveal the effects of environment on community assemblage of freshwater mussels and fishes in European rivers

“…Based on the results, we hypothesize that mussel distributions are nested within the host fish distributions and that the presence of fish hosts in given communities is driven by both abiotic and biotic factors, while the presence of mussels is primarily driven by local abiotic conditions. Previous studies with a single‐species SDM partially supported this hypothesis, where the breadth of suitable habitats for fish hosts were larger than that of mussels (Inoue et al ., ) and the abundance of fish hosts as a predictor improved the model fitness of SDMs (Lois et al ., ).…”

“…The distribution of mussels and fishes can be influenced by a range of abiotic factors, including variability in climate (Inoue et al, 2015), heterogeneity in riparian land cover (Morris & Corkum, 1996;€ Osterling & H€ ogberg, 2014) and variability in hydrology and geology (Strayer, 1993). Temperature and precipitation can be key factors determining fundamental niches for aquatic organisms (Heino et al, 2009).…”

Estimates of gene flow and dispersal in wild riverine Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) populations reveal ongoing migration and introgression from stocked fish

“…A major goal of conservation biology is to determine how anthropogenic influences are shaping wild populations and their genetic structure under altered habitat regimes (Bushar et al, 2014;Cornille et al, 2015;Inoue, Lang, & Berg, 2015). Centuries of human mitigated translocations have led to intraspecific hybridization across the landscape, often leading to a reduction in genetic variability while increasing genetic homogenization (Laikre, Schwartz, Waples, & Ryman, 2010;Ozerov et al, 2016).…”

Spatial and temporal genetic dynamics of the grasshopper Oedaleus decorus revealed by museum genomics

“…Understanding processes shaping the genetic variation in species through space and time is crucial in various fields of biology, ranging from informing conservation decisions (e.g., Inoue, Lang, & Berg, ; Mukesh, Sharma, Shukla, & Sathyakumar, ) and unraveling the demographic history of species (e.g., Gong et al., ; Tsuda, Nakao, Ide, & Tsumura, ; Vera Escalona, Habit, & Ruzzante, ) to disentangling key evolutionary processes (e.g., Capblancq, Després, Rioux, & Mavárez, ). Investigating genetic variation through space has proven valuable to unravel the role of environment in genetic divergence (Björklund, Alonso, & Edelaar, ; D'Amen, Zimmermann, & Pearman, ).…”