Considerations for monitoring population trends of colonial waterbirds using the effective number of breeders and census estimates.

ABSTRACT: Detecting trends in population size fluctuations is a major focus in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. Populations of colonial waterbirds have been monitored using demographic approaches to determine annual census size (N_a). We propose the addition of genetic estimates of the effective number of breeders (N_b) as indirect measures of the risk of loss of genetic diversity to improve the evaluation of demographics and increase the accuracy of trend estimates in breeding colonies. Here, we investigated which methods of the estimation of N_b are more precise under conditions of moderate genetic diversity, limited sample sizes and few microsatellite loci, as often occurs with natural populations. We used the wood stork as a model s

SUBMITTER: da Silva FM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6144984 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature