Dillon RT. Volatility in the effective size of a freshwater gastropod population.
Ecol Evol 2018;
8:2746-2751. [PMID:
29531691 PMCID:
PMC5838079 DOI:
10.1002/ece3.3912]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2017] [Revised: 01/09/2018] [Accepted: 01/11/2018] [Indexed: 11/06/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite the utility of gastropod models for the study of evolutionary processes of great generality and importance, their effective population size has rarely been estimated in the field. Here, we report allele frequency variance at three allozyme-encoding loci monitored over 7 years in a population of the invasive freshwater pulmonate snail Physa acuta (Draparnaud 1805), estimating effective population size with both single-sample and two-sample approaches. Estimated Ne declined from effectively infinite in 2009 to approximately 40-50 in 2012 and then rose back to infinity in 2015, corresponding to a striking fluctuation in the apparent census size of the population. Such volatility in Ne may reflect cryptic population subdivision.
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