Abstract
Conservation policy in the giant Galpagos tortoise, an iconic endangered animal, has been assisted by genetic markers for 15 years: a dozen loci have been used to delineate thirteen (sub)species, between which hybridization is prevented. Here, comparative reanalysis of a previously published NGS data set reveals a conflict with traditional markers. Genetic diversity and population substructure in the giant Galpagos tortoise are found to be particularly low, questioning the genetic relevance of current conservation practices. Further examination of giant Galapagos tortoise population genomics is critically needed.
Highlights
Peer Community Journal is a member of the Centre Mersenne for Open Scientific Publishing http:// www.centre-mersenne.org/
Very little is known regarding the link between genetic variation, morphological variation and fitness in C. nigra
Our analysis of 1000 coding loci did not reveal any evidence of genetic structure in this sample, i.e. the homozygosity of the five individuals was not higher than expected under the hypothesis that they belonged to a single panmictic population
Summary
Peer Community Journal is a member of the Centre Mersenne for Open Scientific Publishing http:// www.centre-mersenne.org/. Our analysis of 1000 coding loci did not reveal any evidence of genetic structure in this sample, i.e. the homozygosity of the five individuals was not higher than expected under the hypothesis that they belonged to a single panmictic population.
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