Evidence of spatial genetic structure in a snow leopard population from Gansu, China.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the spatial structure of genetic diversity provides insights into a populations' genetic status and enables assessment of its capacity to counteract the effects of genetic drift. Such knowledge is particularly scarce for the snow leopard, a conservation flagship species of Central Asia mountains. Focusing on a snow leopard population in the Qilian mountains of Gansu Province, China, we characterised the spatial genetic patterns by incorporating spatially explicit indices of diversity and multivariate analyses, based on different inertia levels of Principal Component Analysis (PCA). We compared two datasets differing in the number of loci and individuals. We found that genetic patterns were significantly spatially structured and were characterised by a broad geographical divis

SUBMITTER: Atzeni L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8626472 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature