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Publication year : 0
Thematic : Marine Resources
Language : English
Note
Population connectivity plays significant
roles on both evolutionary and ecological time-scales;
however, quantifying the magnitude and pattern of exchange
between populations of marine organisms is
hindered by the difficulty of tracking the trajectory and
fate of propagules. We explored biophysical correlates
of population substructure to determine how well
pelagic larval duration (PLD) correlates with population
genetic estimates of connectivity in a sample of 300
published studies drawn pseudo-randomly from about
1600 hits on electronic searches. In direct contrast to the
general expectation of a strong correlation, we find that
average PLD is poorly correlated (r2 < 0.1) with genetic
structure (FST). Furthermore, even this weak correlation
is anchored by non-pelagic dispersal, because removal
of the zero PLD class (direct developers) from the analysis
resulted in a non-significant relationship between
FST and PLD. For species in which minimum, maximum,
and mean PLDs were available, it is noteworthy that
both minimum and maximum PLDs are better correlated
with FST than the mean larval duration, which has
been used in all such previous studies. A 3-way ANCOVA
reveals that genetic marker class (allozymes,
microsatellites, and mitochondrial DNA sequences), as
opposed to habitat or swimming ability, explain most of
the variation in FST (F = 7.113, df = 2, p = 0.001), with
higher values of FST obtained from mtDNA than with
either microsatellites or allozymes (which were not significantly
different). Our meta-analysis refutes recent
reviews and conventional wisdom that PLD is a good
predictor of the magnitude of gene flow and geographic
scale of population structure in marine systems.
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Keywords : Manis culionensis
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje