Assessing the Impacts of Adaptation to Native-Range Habitats and Contemporary Founder Effects on Genetic Diversity in an Invasive Fish.

Species invading non-native habitats can cause irreversible environmental damage and economic harm. Yet, how introduced species become widespread invaders remains poorly understood. Adaptation within native-range habitats and rapid adaptation to new environments may both influence invasion success.

Simulating the effects of long-distance dispersal and landscape heterogeneity on the eco-evolutionary outcomes of range expansion in an invasive riverine fish, Tench (Tinca tinca).

Predicting how quickly populations expand their range and whether they will retain genetic diversity when they are introduced to new regions or track environmental conditions suited to their survival is an important applied and theoretical challenge. The literature suggests that long-distance dispersal, landscape heterogeneity and the evolution of dispersal influence populations' expansion rates and genetic diversity. We used individual-based spatially explicit simulations to examine these relationships for Tench (Tinca tinca), an invasive fish expanding its geographical range in eastern North America since the 1990s.

Evaluating the evolutionary mechanisms maintaining alternative mating strategies in a simulated bull trout () population.

The coexistence of distinct alternative mating strategies (AMS) is often explained by mechanisms involving trade-offs between reproductive traits and lifetime fitness; yet their relative importance remains poorly understood. Here, we used an established individual-based, spatially explicit model to simulate bull trout () in the Skagit River (Washington, USA) and investigated the influence of female mating preference, sneaker-specific mortality, and variation in age-at-maturity on AMS persistence using global sensitivity analyses and boosted regression trees. We assumed that two genetically fixed AMS coexisted within the population: sneaker males (characterized by younger age-at-maturity, greater AMS-specific mortality, and lower reproductive fitness) and territorial males.

Genetic diversity and structure of a recent fish invasion: Tench () in eastern North America.

Introduced and geographically expanding populations experience similar eco-evolutionary challenges, including founder events, genetic bottlenecks, and novel environments. Theory predicts that reduced genetic diversity resulting from such phenomena limits the success of introduced populations. Using 1900 SNPs obtained from restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing, we evaluated hypotheses related to the invasion history and connectivity of an invasive population of Tench (), a Eurasian freshwater fish that has been expanding geographically in eastern North America for three decades.

What can be learned from fishers' perceptions for fishery management planning? Case study insights from Sainte-Marie, Madagascar.

Local support is critical to the success and longevity of fishery management initiatives. Previous research suggests that how resource users perceive ecological changes, explain them, and cope with them, influences local support. The objectives of this study were two-fold.

Geo-referenced population-specific microsatellite data across American continents, the MacroPopGen Database.

Population genetic data from nuclear DNA has yet to be synthesized to allow broad scale comparisons of intraspecific diversity versus species diversity. The MacroPopGen database collates and geo-references vertebrate population genetic data across the Americas from 1,308 nuclear microsatellite DNA studies, 897 species, and 9,090 genetically distinct populations where genetic differentiation (F) was measured. Caribbean populations were particularly distinguished from North, Central, and South American populations, in having higher differentiation (F = 0.

A critical assessment of estimating census population size from genetic population size (or vice versa) in three fishes.

Technological and methodological advances have facilitated the use of genetic data to infer census population size (N) in natural populations, particularly where traditional mark-and-recapture is challenging. The effective number of breeders (N) describes how many adults effectively contribute to a cohort and is often correlated with N. Predicting N from N or vice versa in species with overlapping generations has important implications for conservation by permitting (i) estimation of the more difficult to quantify variable and (ii) inferences of N/N relationships in related species lacking data.