TY - JOUR

T1 - Living in Heterogeneous Woodlands - Are Habitat Continuity or Quality Drivers of Genetic Variability in a Flightless Ground Beetle?

AU - Marcus, Tamar

AU - Boch, Steffen

AU - Durka, Walter

AU - Fischer, Markus

AU - Gossner, Martin M.

AU - Müller, Jörg

AU - Schöning, Ingo

AU - Weisser, Wolfgang W.

AU - Drees, Claudia

AU - Assmann, Thorsten

PY - 2015/12/7

Y1 - 2015/12/7

N2 - Although genetic diversity is one of the key components of biodiversity, its drivers are still not fully understood. While it is known that genetic diversity is affected both by environmental parameters as well as habitat history, these factors are not often tested together. Therefore, we analyzed 14 microsatellite loci in Abax parallelepipedus, a flightless, forest dwelling ground beetle, from 88 plots in two study regions in Germany. We modeled the effects of historical and environmental variables on allelic richness, and found for one of the regions, the Schorfheide-Chorin, a significant effect of the depth of the litter layer, which is a main component of habitat quality, and of the sampling effort, which serves as an inverse proxy for local population size. For the other region, the Schwäbische Alb, none of the potential drivers showed a significant effect on allelic richness. We conclude that the genetic diversity in our study species is being driven by current local population sizes via environmental variables and not by historical processes in the studied regions. This is also supported by lack of genetic differentiation between local populations sampled from ancient and from recent woodlands.We suggest that the potential effects of former fragmentation and recolonization processes have been mitigated by the large and stable local populations of Abax parallelepipedus in combination with the proximity of the ancient and recent woodlands in the studied landscapes.

AB - Although genetic diversity is one of the key components of biodiversity, its drivers are still not fully understood. While it is known that genetic diversity is affected both by environmental parameters as well as habitat history, these factors are not often tested together. Therefore, we analyzed 14 microsatellite loci in Abax parallelepipedus, a flightless, forest dwelling ground beetle, from 88 plots in two study regions in Germany. We modeled the effects of historical and environmental variables on allelic richness, and found for one of the regions, the Schorfheide-Chorin, a significant effect of the depth of the litter layer, which is a main component of habitat quality, and of the sampling effort, which serves as an inverse proxy for local population size. For the other region, the Schwäbische Alb, none of the potential drivers showed a significant effect on allelic richness. We conclude that the genetic diversity in our study species is being driven by current local population sizes via environmental variables and not by historical processes in the studied regions. This is also supported by lack of genetic differentiation between local populations sampled from ancient and from recent woodlands.We suggest that the potential effects of former fragmentation and recolonization processes have been mitigated by the large and stable local populations of Abax parallelepipedus in combination with the proximity of the ancient and recent woodlands in the studied landscapes.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Population genetics

KW - Paleogenetics

KW - Forests

KW - Population size

KW - Species diversity

KW - Habitats

KW - Beetles

KW - Population density

KW - Gender and Diversity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84955589793&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0144217

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0144217

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 26641644

AN - SCOPUS:84955589793

VL - 10

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

SN - 1932-6203

IS - 12

M1 - e0144217

ER -