New paper: effect of conservation refugia on biodiversity

What is the impact of the 'refuge' or 'ark population' conservation measure on biodiversity? Masters/Honours student Peter Koene along with PhD student Marco Crotti have completed a project on how morphologies and plasticity change in new habitats and after population bottlenecks, studying powan or European whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus) here in Scotland.

Full paper is available here
"Differential selection pressures result in a rapid divergence of donor and refuge populations of a high conservation value freshwater fish Coregonus lavaretus (L.)"

J. Peter Koene, Marco Crotti, Kathryn R Elmer, Colin E Adams

Abstract
As a conservation measure to protect European whitefish in Scotland, a translocated popu-lation  was  established  in  Loch  Sloy  from  Loch  Lomond  stock  between  1988  and  1990.  Previous  study  has  assumed  that  current  morphological  differences  between  adults  from  the  donor  and  refuge  lakes  have  arisen  through  phenotypic  plasticity.  The  present  study  compared  the  morphologies  of  whitefish  at  three  life  stages:  alevins  and  fry  raised  in  a  common garden, and wild-caught adults. Alevins were clearly distinguishable by their lake of  origin.  Loch  Sloy  alevins  were  distinguishable  also  by  family,  although  this  was  not  the case for Loch Lomond. Differential allometric trajectories facilitated the persistence of morphological  differences  associated  with  lake  of  origin  through  the  fry  stage  into  adult-hood.  Overall,  the  whitefish  from  Loch  Lomond  displayed  morphologies  associated  with  pelagic  feeders,  while  the  more  robust  heads  and  ventrally  positioned  snouts  of  the  Loch  Sloy whitefish conformed to expectations for more benthic feeding habits. That differences between populations were present not only in wild adults, but also in alevins and fry from a common garden setup, strongly suggests that the divergence between populations is due to inheritance mechanisms, rather than differential plastic responses, and questions the effec-tiveness of translocation as a conservation measure.

Keywords   Whitefish · Conservation · Translocation · Divergence · Morphology

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