Abstract
The Purple Sandpiper (Calidris maritima) is a medium‐sized shorebird that breeds in the Arctic and winters along northern Atlantic coastlines. Migration routes and affiliations between breeding grounds and wintering grounds are incompletely understood. Some populations appear to be declining, and future management policies for this species will benefit from understanding their migration patterns. This study used two mitochondrial DNA markers and 10 microsatellite loci to analyze current population structure and historical demographic trends. Samples were obtained from breeding locations in Nunavut (Canada), Iceland, and Svalbard (Norway) and from wintering locations along the coast of Maine (USA), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland (Canada), and Scotland (UK). Mitochondrial haplotypes displayed low genetic diversity, and a shallow phylogeny indicating recent divergence. With the exception of the two Canadian breeding populations from Nunavut, there was significant genetic differentiation among samples from all breeding locations; however, none of the breeding populations was a monophyletic group. We also found differentiation between both Iceland and Svalbard breeding populations and North American wintering populations. This pattern of divergence is consistent with a previously proposed migratory pathway between Canadian breeding locations and wintering grounds in the United Kingdom, but argues against migration between breeding grounds in Iceland and Svalbard and wintering grounds in North America. Breeding birds from Svalbard also showed a genetic signature intermediate between Canadian breeders and Icelandic breeders. Our results extend current knowledge of Purple Sandpiper population genetic structure and present new information regarding migration routes to wintering grounds in North America.
Highlights
Purple Sandpipers (Calidris maritima) breed from the Canadian High Arctic to southern Hudson Bay, as well as in Greenland, Iceland, mainland Norway and Russia, and northern islands from Svalbard (Norway) east to the Severnaya Islands (Russia; Cramp & Simmons, 1983)
Because there were no strong differences in interpretation between these two scenarios, we present only the results obtained for the analysis in which the northern Hudson Bay Purple Sandpipers were placed in C. m. maritima
We found evidence of recent divergence in both mtDNA and nuDNA markers among four breeding populations of Purple Sandpipers, with samples from Iceland and Svalbard being the most distinctive for both data sets
Summary
Purple Sandpipers (Calidris maritima) breed from the Canadian High Arctic to southern Hudson Bay, as well as in Greenland, Iceland, mainland Norway and Russia, and northern islands from Svalbard (Norway) east to the Severnaya Islands (Russia; Cramp & Simmons, 1983). The majority of Svalbard breeders migrate to the Norwegian coast and western Sweden (Hake, Blomqvist, Pierce, Järås, & Johansson, 1997), but small numbers winter in northeast Scotland (Summers et al, 2010) where they mix with individuals from Canada (Summers et al, 2014) Their extreme northern breeding and northern wintering ranges, their complex migratory patterns and their relatively recent colonization of the Arctic following the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation, make this a fascinating species for both ecological and evolutionary studies. The genetic structure of some Purple Sandpiper populations has recently been examined by Barisas, Amouret, Hallgrímsson, Summers, and Pálsson (2015) These authors used mitochondrial (ND2 and COX1) and nuclear gene DNA sequences (a sex-linked nuDNA intron, RANBP3L, and four autosomal nuDNA introns, HMG-2, PDCD11, TGFβ2, RPL30) and morphometric data (wing, culmen, tail, and tarsus lengths) to assess the validity of three potential subspecies, C. maritima maritima, Calidris m. We assess genetic diversity and population structuring of Purple Sandpipers across a large portion of their global range to evaluate whether the breeding origin of migratory, wintering birds can be determined using genetic data
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