Genetic Differentiation News Today

The earth is entering a sixth mass extinction, and terrestrial mammal extinctions in Australia have occurred at a faster rate in the last 200 years than any other country in the world. When a threatened mammal species experiences inbreeding depression, genetic drift or a genetic bottleneck, their risk of extinction increases. Researching and detecting these processes is crucial as it allows managers to initiate genetic rescue before it is too late. Conservation genomics is a field that provides ...

Australian arboreal mammals are experiencing significant population declines, particularly due to land clearing and resulting habitat fragmentation. The squirrel glider, Petaurus norfolcensis, is a threatened species in New South Wales, with a stronghold population in the Lake Macquarie Local Government Area (LGA) where fragmentation due to urbanization is an ongoing problem for the species conservation. Here we report on the use of squirrel glider mitochondrial (385 bp cytochrome b gene, 70 ind...

Recurring outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) severely damage healthy corals, especially in the Western Pacific Ocean. To obtain a better understanding of population genetics of COTS and historical colonization across the Pacific Ocean, complete mitochondrial genomes were sequenced from 243 individuals collected in 11 reef regions. Our results indicate that Pacific COTS (Acanthaster cf. solaris) comprise two major clades, an East-Central Pacific (ECP) clade and a Pan-Pacific (PP) clade,...