Accounting for cryptic population substructure enhances detection of inbreeding depression with genomic inbreeding coefficients: an example from a critically endangered marsupial.

Characterizing inbreeding depression in wildlife populations can be critical to their conservation. Coefficients of individual inbreeding can be estimated from genome-wide marker data. The degree to which sensitivity of inbreeding coefficients to population genetic substructure alters estimates of inbreeding depression in wild populations is not well understood.

Evidence of Subdivisions on Evolutionary Timescales in a Large, Declining Marsupial Distributed across a Phylogeographic Barrier.

Major prehistoric forces, such as the climatic shifts of the Pleistocene, can remain visible in a species' population genetics. Inference of refuges via genetic tools is useful for conservation management as it can identify populations whose preservation may help retain a species' adaptive potential. Such investigation is needed for Australia's southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons), whose conservation status has recently deteriorated, and whose phylogeographic history during the Pleistocene may be atypical compared to other species.

Population genetic analysis reveals a long-term decline of a threatened endemic Australian marsupial.

Since European colonization, Leadbeater's possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) has declined across its range to the point where it is now only patchily distributed within the montane ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria. The loss of large hollow-bearing trees coupled with inadequate recruitment of mature ash forest has been predicted to result in a reduction in population size of up to 90% by 2020. Furthermore, bioclimatic analyses have suggested additional reductions in the species' distribution under a variety of climate change scenarios.

Isolated remnant or recent introduction? Estimating the provenance of Yellingbo leadbeater's possums by genetic analysis and bottleneck simulation.

Effective conservation management requires that genetically divergent populations potentially harbouring important local adaptations be identified and maintained as separate management units. In the case of the endangered Australian Leadbeater's possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri), an arboreal marsupial endemic to Victoria, uncertainty over the evolutionary origin of a potentially important extant wild population recently discovered in atypical habitat (lowland swamp) at Yellingbo is hampering such efforts. The population is rumoured to be a recent introduction.