TY - JOUR

T1 - Island area, body size and demographic history shape genomic diversity in Darwin's finches and related tanagers

AU - Brüniche-Olsen, Anna

AU - Kellner, Kenneth F.

AU - DeWoody, J. Andrew

N1 - Funding Information: We thank Sangeet Lamichhaney, Jonas Berglund, Markus Sällman Almén, Khurram Maqbool, Manfred Grabherr, Alvaro Martinez‐Barrio, Marta Promerová, Carl‐Johan Rubin, Chao Wang, Neda Zamani, B Rosemary Grant, Peter R Grant, Matthew T Webster, Leif Andersson, Fan Han and Robert Prŷs‐Jones for kindly making their genomic and morphometric data publicly available. We thank Anders Albrechtsen for helpful suggestions and discussions of approaches for using genotype likelihoods. We thank John W. Bickham and members of the DeWoody laboratory group for constructive criticism on an earlier version of the manuscript. This work was supported in part by the U.S. National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

PY - 2019/11/1

Y1 - 2019/11/1

N2 - Genomic diversity is the evolutionary foundation for adaptation to environmental change and thus is essential to consider in conservation planning. Island species are ideal for investigating the evolutionary drivers of genomic diversity, in part because of the potential for biological replicates. Here, we use genome data from 180 individuals spread among 27 island populations from 17 avian species to study the effects of island area, body size, demographic history and conservation status on contemporary genomic diversity. Our study expands earlier work on a small number of neutral loci to the entire genome and from a few species to many. We find significant positive correlation between island size and genomic diversity, a significant negative correlation between body size and genomic diversity, and that historical population declines significantly reduced contemporary genomic diversity. Our study shows that island size is the key factor in determining genomic diversity, indicating that habitat conservation is key to maintaining adaptive potential in the face of global environmental change. We found that threatened species generally had a significantly smaller values of Watterson's theta (θW = 4Neμ) compared to nonthreatened species, suggesting that θW may be useful as a conservation indicator for at-risk species. Overall, these findings (a) provide biological insights into how genomic diversity scales with ecological, morphological and demographic factors; and (b) illustrate how population genomic data can be leveraged to better inform conservation efforts.

AB - Genomic diversity is the evolutionary foundation for adaptation to environmental change and thus is essential to consider in conservation planning. Island species are ideal for investigating the evolutionary drivers of genomic diversity, in part because of the potential for biological replicates. Here, we use genome data from 180 individuals spread among 27 island populations from 17 avian species to study the effects of island area, body size, demographic history and conservation status on contemporary genomic diversity. Our study expands earlier work on a small number of neutral loci to the entire genome and from a few species to many. We find significant positive correlation between island size and genomic diversity, a significant negative correlation between body size and genomic diversity, and that historical population declines significantly reduced contemporary genomic diversity. Our study shows that island size is the key factor in determining genomic diversity, indicating that habitat conservation is key to maintaining adaptive potential in the face of global environmental change. We found that threatened species generally had a significantly smaller values of Watterson's theta (θW = 4Neμ) compared to nonthreatened species, suggesting that θW may be useful as a conservation indicator for at-risk species. Overall, these findings (a) provide biological insights into how genomic diversity scales with ecological, morphological and demographic factors; and (b) illustrate how population genomic data can be leveraged to better inform conservation efforts.

KW - Aves

KW - conservation status

KW - Heterozygosity

KW - IUCN

KW - theta

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074563022&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/mec.15266

DO - 10.1111/mec.15266

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 31597210

AN - SCOPUS:85074563022

VL - 28

SP - 4914

EP - 4925

JO - Molecular Ecology

JF - Molecular Ecology

SN - 0962-1083

IS - 22

ER -