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Metadata

Name
Data from: Dispersal in the sub-Antarctic: king penguins show remarkably little population genetic differentiation across their range
Repository
ZENODO
Identifier
doi:10.5061/dryad.7c0q8
Description
Background: Seabirds are important components of marine ecosystems, both as predators and as indicators of ecological change, being conspicuous and sensitive to changes in prey abundance. To determine whether fluctuations in population sizes are localised or indicative of large-scale ecosystem change, we must first understand population structure and dispersal. King penguins are long-lived seabirds that occupy a niche across the sub-Antarctic zone close to the Polar Front. Colonies have very different histories of exploitation, population recovery, and expansion. Results: We investigated the genetic population structure and patterns of colonisation of king penguins across their current range using a dataset of 5154 unlinked, high-coverage single nucleotide polymorphisms generated via restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RADSeq). Despite breeding at a small number of discrete, geographically separate sites, we find only very slight genetic differentiation among colonies separated by thousands of kilometers of open-ocean, suggesting migration among islands and archipelagos may be common. Our results show that the South Georgia population is slightly differentiated from all other colonies and suggest that the recently founded Falkland Island colony is likely to have been established by migrants from the distant Crozet Islands rather than nearby colonies on South Georgia, possibly as a result of density-dependent processes. Conclusions: The observed subtle differentiation among king penguin colonies must be considered in future conservation planning and monitoring of the species, and demographic models that attempt to forecast extinction risk in response to large-scale climate change must take into account migration. It is possible that migration could buffer king penguins against some of the impacts of climate change where colonies appear panmictic, although it is unlikely to protect them completely given the widespread physical changes projected for their Southern Ocean foraging grounds. Overall, large-scale population genetic studies of marine predators across the Southern Ocean are revealing more interconnection and migration than previously supposed.
Data or Study Types
multiple
Source Organization
Unknown
Access Conditions
available
Year
2021
Access Hyperlink
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7c0q8

Distributions

  • Encoding Format: HTML ; URL: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.7c0q8
colonieskingchangepenguinsacrossgeneticmustpredatorsshowpreysizesfirstzonepolarrecoveryviasite
This project was funded in part by grant U24AI117966 from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as part of the Big Data to Knowledge program. We thank all members of the bioCADDIE community for their valuable input on the overall project.