The Asian plethodontid salamander preserves historical genetic imprints of recent northern expansion.

ABSTRACT: The Korean Peninsula, located at the southern tip of Northeast Asia, has never been covered by ice sheets and was a temperate refugium during the Pleistocene. Karsenia koreana, the sole Asian plethodontid salamander species, occurs only on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula and is thought to have found various climatic refugia. Despite its phylogenetic and biogeographic importance, no population-level genetic analysis has been performed on this species. Here we study the population genetic structure of K. koreana using mitochondrial and microsatellite loci to understand the recent historical dispersion process that shaped its current distribution. Overall, the genetic distance between populations correlated well with the spatial distance, and the genetic structure among populations

SUBMITTER: Jeon JY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8080585 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature