Sex-biased Gene Flow Among Elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Résumé du livre

We quantified patterns of population genetic structure to help understand gene flow among elk populations across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We sequenced 596 base pairs of the mitochondrial (mt)DNA control region of 380 elk from eight populations. Analysis revealed high mtDNA variation within populations, averaging 13.0 haplotypes with high mean gene diversity (0.85). The genetic differentiation among populations for mtDNA was relatively high (FST = 0.161; P = 0.001) compared to genetic differentiation for nuclear microsatellite data (FST = 0.002; P = 0.332), which suggested relatively low female gene flow among populations. The estimated ratio of male to female gene flow (m_m/m_f = 46) was among the highest we have seen reported for large mammals. Genetic distance (for mtDNA pair-wise FST) was not significantly correlated with geographic (Euclidean) distance between populations (Mantel's r = 0.274, P = 0.168). Large mtDNA genetic distances (e.g. F_ST > 0.2) between some of the geographically closest populations (