Reversing the decline of threatened koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus ) populations in New South Wales: Using genomics to enhance conservation outcomes

作者：Matthew J. Lott, Greta J. Frankham, Mark D. B. Eldridge, David E. Alquezar‐Planas, Lily Donnelly, Kyall R. Zenger, Kellie Leigh, Shannon R. Kjeldsen, Matthew A. Field, John Lemon, Daniel Lunney, Mathew S. Crowther, Mark Krockenberger, Mark Fisher, Linda E. Neaves · 发表于：Ecology and Evolution · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1002/ece3.11700 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock、Genetic diversity and population structure、Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Abstract Genetic management is a critical component of threatened species conservation. Understanding spatial patterns of genetic diversity is essential for evaluating the resilience of fragmented populations to accelerating anthropogenic threats. Nowhere is this more relevant than on the Australian continent, which is experiencing an ongoing loss of biodiversity that exceeds any other developed nation. Using a proprietary genome complexity reduction‐based method (DArTSeq), we generated a data set of 3239 high quality Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) to investigate spatial patterns and indices of genetic diversity in the koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus ), a highly specialised folivorous marsupial that is experiencing rapid and widespread population declines across much of its former range. Our findings demonstrate that current management divisions across the state of New South Wales (NSW) do not fully represent the distribution of genetic diversity among extant koala populations, and that care must be taken to ensure that translocation paradigms based on these frameworks do not inadvertently restrict gene flow between populations and regions that were historically interconnected. We also recommend that koala populations should be prioritised for conservation action based on the scale and severity of the threatening processes that they are currently faced with, rather than placing too much emphasis on their perceived value (e.g., as reservoirs of potentially adaptive alle...