Population structure and genetic management of Rio Grande cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis)
Citation
David E Cowley, Victoria L Pritchard, and Jessica L Metcalf, Population structure and genetic management of Rio Grande cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis): .
Summary
The Rio Grande cutthroat trout, Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis, has declined precipitously over the past century, and currently exhibits a highly fragmented distribution within the Canadian, Pecos and Rio Grande river systems of the western United States. The relationships between populations in the three river drainages, and between O. c. virginalis and the closely related taxa O. c. pleuriticus and O. c. stomias, are not well understood. In order to guide management decisions for the subspecies, we investigated the distribution of variation at 12 microsatellite loci and two regions of the mitochondrial genome. We observed a high level of genetic differentiation between O. c. virginalis populations occupying different headwater streams [...]
Summary
The Rio Grande cutthroat trout, Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis, has
declined precipitously over the past century, and currently exhibits a
highly fragmented distribution within the Canadian, Pecos and Rio Grande
river systems of the western United States. The relationships between
populations in the three river drainages, and between O. c. virginalis
and the closely related taxa O. c. pleuriticus and O. c. stomias, are
not well understood. In order to guide management decisions for the
subspecies, we investigated the distribution of variation at 12
microsatellite loci and two regions of the mitochondrial genome. We
observed a high level of genetic differentiation between O. c.
virginalis populations occupying different headwater streams (global Fst
= 0.41). However, we found evidence for previous gene flow within the
Rio Grande drainage, indicating that inter-population differentiation
may have been exacerbated by the recent effects of population
fragmentation. Despite large-scale anthropogenic movement of individuals
from the Rio Grande into the Canadian and Pecos, the genetic signature
of long-term evolutionary independence between the three drainages has
been retained. Published in Conservation Genetics, volume 10, issue 5,
on pages 1209 - 1221, in 2009.
