Genetic diversity within vertebrate species is greater at lower latitudes

Abstract

The latitudinal gradient of species diversity is one of the oldest recognized patterns in biology. While the cause of the pattern remains debated, the global signal of greater diversity toward the tropics is widely established. Whether the pattern holds for genetic diversity within species, however, has received much less attention. We examine latitudinal variation of intraspecific genetic diversity by contrasting nucleotide distance within low- and high-latitude animal groups. Using mitochondrial DNA markers across 72 vertebrate species that together span six continents, two oceans, and 129 degrees of latitude, we found significantly greater genetic diversity at low latitudes within mammalian species, and trends consistent with this pattern in reptiles, amphibians, fish, and birds. The signal held even after removing species whose current geographic ranges include areas recently covered by glaciers during the late Pleistocene and which presumably have experienced colonization bottlenecks in high latitudes. Higher genetic diversity within species was found at low latitudes also for genera that do not possess higher species richness toward the tropics. Moreover, examination of a subset of species with sufficient sampling across a broad geographic range revealed that genetic variation demonstrates a typical gradient, with mid-latitude populations intermediate in genetic diversity between high and low latitude ones. These results broaden the pattern of the global latitudinal diversity gradient, to now include variation within species. These results are also concordant with other studies indicating that low latitude populations and species are on different evolutionary trajectories than high latitude ones, and we speculate that higher rates of evolution toward the equator are driving the pattern for genetic diversity within species.