Spatiotemporal Genetic Diversity of Lions Reveals the Influence of Habitat Fragmentation across Africa.

ABSTRACT: Direct comparisons between historical and contemporary populations allow for detecting changes in genetic diversity through time and assessment of the impact of habitat fragmentation. Here, we determined the genetic architecture of both historical and modern lions to document changes in genetic diversity over the last century. We surveyed microsatellite and mitochondrial genome variation from 143 high-quality museum specimens of known provenance, allowing us to directly compare this information with data from several recently published nuclear and mitochondrial studies. Our results provide evidence for male-mediated gene flow and recent isolation of local subpopulations, likely due to habitat fragmentation. Nuclear markers showed a significant decrease in genetic diversity from the histori

SUBMITTER: Curry CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8480188 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature