Endangered species in small habitat patches can po

Authors: David N M Mbora Mark A McPeek

Publish Date: 2010/03/10

Volume: 11, Issue: 5, Pages: 1725-1735

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Abstract

We used mtDNA sequence data from the Tana River red colobus and mangabey to determine how their population genetic structure was influenced by dispersal and habitat fragmentation The colobus and mangabey are critically endangered primates endemic to gallery forests in eastern Kenya The forests are a Pliocene–Pleistocene refugium that has recently undergone significant habitat loss and fragmentation due to human activities We expected both primates to exhibit low levels of genetic diversity due to elevated genetic drift in their small populations and to show a strong correspondence between genetic and geographic distance due to disruption of gene flow between forests by habitat fragmentation Additionally because mangabey females are philopatric we expected their mtDNA variation to be homogeneous within forest patches but to be heterogeneous between patches In contrast colobus have a femalebiased dispersal and so we expected their mtDNA variation to be homogeneous within and between forest patches We found high levels of haplotype and nucleotide diversity as well as high levels of sequence divergence between haplotype groups in both species The red colobus had significantly higher genetic variation than the mangabey did Most of the genetic variation in both primates was found within forest fragments Although both species showed strong interforest patch genetic structure we found no correspondence between genetic and geographic distances for the two primates We attributed the high genetic diversity to recent high effective population size and high sequence divergence and strong genetic structures to longterm habitat changes in the landscapeWe are grateful to our dedicated field assistants Abio Gafo Michael Morowa John Kokani Sylvia Isaya Mary Galana Hiribae Galana Galana Galole Bakari Kawa and Mohamed Kawa And for additional field assistance from Drs Julie and Gerard Wieczkowski We are indebted to our professional colleagues who helped at various stages of the project We are grateful for tissue samples from Dr Cathi Lehn Colobus guereza and Dr Nelson Ting Procolobus tephrosceles and Procolobus badius and genomic DNA from Dr TL Goldberg Procolobus tephrosceles Drs Cathi Lehn Ryan Thum and Nelson Ting offered useful advice on technical procedures Drs Douglas Meikle and Douglas Bolger offered critical comments on early drafts of the manuscript and the comments of two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated Funding of this work came from The Rufford Foundation Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation National Geographic Society and Dartmouth College Permission to conduct research was granted by the government of Kenya via permit number MOEST13/001/35C417/2

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