Genetic diversity in fishes is influenced by habitat type and life-history variation.

ABSTRACT: Populations of fishes are increasingly threatened by over-exploitation, pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change. In order to better understand the factors that can explain the amount of genetic diversity in wild populations of fishes, we collected estimates of genetic diversity (mean heterozygosity and mean rarefied number of alleles per locus) along with habitat associations, conservation status, and life-history information for 463 fish species. We ran a series of phylogenetic generalized least squares models to determine which factors influence genetic diversity in fishes after accounting for shared evolutionary history among related taxa. We found that marine fishes had significantly higher genetic diversity than freshwater fishes with marine fishes averaging 11.3 more allel

SUBMITTER: Martinez AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6303716 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature