Red Deer in Bavaria
Identifying Populations for Conservation
Subsequent habitat fragmentation has presumably changed the genetic structure of the Bavarian red deer population. Understanding the process and patterns of gene flow requires a detailed knowledge of how landscape characteristics and anthropogenic influences structure populations.
This understanding is crucial for managing properly the genetic diversity of threatened and endangered populations. New approaches, defined as “Landscape genetics”, were used to facilitate the understanding of how geographical, anthropogenic and environmental features influence genetic variation of the red deer in Bavaria. In addition, genetic criteria were used to select candidate subpopulations to be given priority for conservation.
Conventional diversity measures such as expected heterozygosityHe, number of polymorphic alleles na, or allelic richness AR have been considered. For conservation purpose priority should be given to additional measures like probability of allelic co-ancestoryFIS and effective population size Ne under the drift or drift-migration model. Additionally, the contribution of the genetic variability of each population to total diversity CT, subdivided into a diversity and a differentiation component as a measure of the uniqueness of a population, was used to identify populations for conservation.
R. Kuehn
Fachgebiet für Wildbiologie und Wildtiermanagement, Technische Universität München-Weihenstephan
Weitere Informationen ...
Subsequent habitat fragmentation has presumably changed the genetic structure of the Bavarian red deer population. Understanding the process and patterns of gene flow requires a detailed knowledge of how landscape characteristics and anthropogenic influences structure populations.
This understanding is crucial for managing properly the genetic diversity of threatened and endangered populations. New approaches, defined as “Landscape genetics”, were used to facilitate the understanding of how geographical, anthropogenic and environmental features influence genetic variation of the red deer in Bavaria. In addition, genetic criteria were used to select candidate subpopulations to be given priority for conservation.
Conventional diversity measures such as expected heterozygosityHe, number of polymorphic alleles na, or allelic richness AR have been considered. For conservation purpose priority should be given to additional measures like probability of allelic co-ancestoryFIS and effective population size Ne under the drift or drift-migration model. Additionally, the contribution of the genetic variability of each population to total diversity CT, subdivided into a diversity and a differentiation component as a measure of the uniqueness of a population, was used to identify populations for conservation.
R. Kuehn
Fachgebiet für Wildbiologie und Wildtiermanagement, Technische Universität München-Weihenstephan
Weitere Informationen ...
