Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus): Is Female Dispersal Important?

Abstract

Abstract The prevailing view of the social organization of temperate bats is that maternity colonies represent aggregations of philopatric females connected to other maternity colonies via male-mediated gene flow. However, few studies have examined fine-scale patterns of matrilineal diversity within and between colonies, and clear evidence of strict philopatry generally is lacking. Here we examine patterns of genetic diversity within and among maternity colonies of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) using both microsatellites and mitochondrial sequences. As in other temperate bats, we observed no differentiation among colonies using nuclear microsatellite markers (FST: −0.0001–0.012; 99.5% of variation within populations). Overall, there was significant mitochondrial structure among colonies, but the pattern was complex, with low ΦST values among some populations and high values among others (range: −0.007–0.491). Three groups of colonies were identified in nested analyses of molecular variance, among whic...