Deconstructing an infamous extinction crisis: Survival of Partula species on Moorea and Tahiti.

ABSTRACT: Eleven of eighteen Society Island Partula species endemic to the Windward Island subgroup (Moorea and Tahiti) have been extirpated by an ill-advised biological control program. The conservation status of this critically endangered tree snail radiation is of considerable import, but is clouded by taxonomic uncertainty due to the extensive lack of congruence among species designations, diagnostic morphologies, and molecular markers. Using a combination of museum, captive, and remnant wild snails, we obtained the first high-resolution nuclear genomic perspective of the evolutionary relationships and survival of fourteen Windward Island Partula species, totaling 93 specimens. We analyzed ~1,607-28,194 nuclear genomic loci collected with the double digest restriction-site associat

SUBMITTER: Haponski AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6503832 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature