Temporal patterns of genetic diversity in Kirtland’s warblers (Dendroica kirtlandii), the rarest songbird in North America

Wilson, Aze; Marra, Peter P.; Fleischer, Robert C.

doi:10.1186/1472-6785-12-8

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Patterns of postbottleneck loss of genetic diversity have been observed globally in a variety of taxa (Wisely et al 2002;Groombridge et al 2009;Alter et al 2012;Wilson et al 2012). Evidence from this study and others suggests that prolonged bottlenecks that result in loss of neutral genetic variation are also likely to result in reductions in MHC diversity, with the latter likely to occur at a greater rate (reviewed in Sutton et al 2011a).…”

Section: Conservation Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 54%

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MHC variation reflects the bottleneck histories of New Zealand passerines

2015

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Most empirical evidence suggests that balancing selection does not counter the effects of genetic drift in shaping postbottleneck major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genetic diversity when population declines are severe or prolonged. However, few studies have been able to include data from historical specimens, or to compare populations/species with different bottleneck histories. In this study, we examined MHC class II B and microsatellite diversity in four New Zealand passerine (songbird) species that experienced moderate to very severe declines. We compared diversity from historical samples (collected c. 1884-1938) to present-day populations. Using a Bayesian framework, we found that the change in genetic diversity from historical to contemporary samples was affected by three main factors: (i) whether the data were based on MHC or microsatellite markers, (ii) species (as a surrogate for bottleneck severity) and (iii) whether the comparison between historical and contemporary samples was made using historical samples originating from the mainland, or using historical samples originating from islands. The greatest losses in genetic diversity occurred for the most severely bottlenecked species, particularly between historical mainland and contemporary samples. Additionally, where loss of diversity occurred, the change was greater for MHC genes compared to microsatellite loci.

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Section: Conservation Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…; Wilson et al . ). Evidence from this study and others suggests that prolonged bottlenecks that result in loss of neutral genetic variation are also likely to result in reductions in MHC diversity, with the latter likely to occur at a greater rate (reviewed in Sutton et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

MHC variation reflects the bottleneck histories of New Zealand passerines

2015

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“…One Neotropical migratory bird that is potentially highly vulnerable to climate change is the Kirtland's Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii; Figure 1), a species that breeds almost exclusively in the northern Lower Peninsula (LP) of Michigan, and winters in the Bahamian archipelago (Cooper, Hallworth, & Marra, 2017;Probst, 1986). Kirtland's Warbler is considered the rarest songbird in North America (Wilson, Marra, & Fleischer, 2012) and has been listed as federally endangered since 1970 (Bureau of Sports Fisheries & Wildlife, 1970). Due to aggressive and collaborative management actions, coupled with the pivotal >24,000-ha Mack Lake wildfire, the species has recovered from ca.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of climate change and postdelisting management on long‐term population viability of the conservation‐reliant Kirtland's Warbler

Brown

Donner

Ribic

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Rapid global climate change is resulting in novel abiotic and biotic conditions and interactions. Identifying management strategies that maximize probability of long‐term persistence requires an understanding of the vulnerability of species to environmental changes. We sought to quantify the vulnerability of Kirtland's Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii), a rare Neotropical migratory songbird that breeds almost exclusively in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and winters in the Bahamian Archipelago, to projected environmental changes on the breeding and wintering grounds. We developed a population‐level simulation model that incorporates the influence of annual environmental conditions on the breeding and wintering grounds, and parameterized the model using empirical relationships. We simulated independent and additive effects of reduced breeding grounds habitat quantity and quality, and wintering grounds habitat quality, on population viability. Our results indicated the Kirtland's Warbler population is stable under current environmental and management conditions. Reduced breeding grounds habitat quantity resulted in reductions of the stable population size, but did not cause extinction under the scenarios we examined. In contrast, projected large reductions in wintering grounds precipitation caused the population to decline, with risk of extinction magnified when breeding habitat quantity or quality also decreased. Our study indicates that probability of long‐term persistence for Kirtland's Warbler will depend on climate change impacts to wintering grounds habitat quality and contributes to the growing literature documenting the importance of considering the full annual cycle for understanding population dynamics of migratory species.

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“…In particular, we combine Equation (10) with approximations of E [ n t ] obtained using Equation (26) to compute the expected number of private alleles in a sample from a population. Private alleles are useful for studying the historical relationships among populations (Tishkoff and Kidd 2004, Szpiech et al 2008), and the number of private alleles is a commonly-used measure of species uniqueness in conservation studies (e.g., Kalinowski 2004, Wilson et al 2012, Ariani et al 2013). …”

Section: Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theory and applications of a deterministic approximation to the coalescent model

Jewett¹,

Rosenberg²

2014

Theoretical Population Biology

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Under the coalescent model, the random number nt of lineages ancestral to a sample is nearly deterministic as a function of time when nt is moderate to large in value, and it is well approximated by its expectation E[nt]. In turn, this expectation is well approximated by simple deterministic functions that are easy to compute. Such deterministic functions have been applied to estimate allele age, effective population size, and genetic diversity, and they have been used to study properties of models of infectious disease dynamics. Although a number of simple approximations of E[nt] have been derived and applied to problems of population-genetic inference, the theoretical accuracy of the formulas and the inferences obtained using these approximations is not known, and the range of problems to which they can be applied is not well understood. Here, we demonstrate general procedures by which the approximation nt ≈ E[nt] can be used to reduce the computational complexity of coalescent formulas, and we show that the resulting approximations converge to their true values under simple assumptions. Such approximations provide alternatives to exact formulas that are computationally intractable or numerically unstable when the number of sampled lineages is moderate or large. We also extend an existing class of approximations of E[nt] to the case of multiple populations of time-varying size with migration among them. Our results facilitate the use of the deterministic approximation nt ≈ E[nt] for deriving functionally simple, computationally efficient, and numerically stable approximations of coalescent formulas under complicated demographic scenarios.

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Temporal patterns of genetic diversity in Kirtland’s warblers (Dendroica kirtlandii), the rarest songbird in North America

Cited by 10 publications

References 58 publications

MHC variation reflects the bottleneck histories of New Zealand passerines

MHC variation reflects the bottleneck histories of New Zealand passerines

Influence of climate change and postdelisting management on long‐term population viability of the conservation‐reliant Kirtland's Warbler

Theory and applications of a deterministic approximation to the coalescent model

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