Abstract
Species that have been translocated and otherwise manipulated by humans may show patterns of population structure that reflect those interactions. At the same time, natural processes shape populations, including behavioural characteristics like dispersal potential and breeding system. In Europe, a key factor is the geography and history of climate change through the Pleistocene. During glacial maxima throughout that period, species in Europe with temperate distributions were forced south, becoming distributed among the isolated peninsulas represented by Anatolia, Italy and Iberia. Understanding modern patterns of diversity depends on understanding these historical population dynamics. Traditionally, European fallow deer (Dama dama dama) are thought to have been restricted to refugia in Anatolia and possibly Sicily and the Balkans. However, the distribution of this species was also greatly influenced by human-mediated translocations. We focus on fallow deer to better understand the relative influence of these natural and anthropogenic processes. We compared modern fallow deer putative populations across a broad geographic range using microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA loci. The results revealed highly insular populations, depauperate of genetic variation and significantly differentiated from each other. This is consistent with the expectations of drift acting on populations founded by small numbers of individuals, and reflects known founder populations in the north. However, there was also evidence for differentiation among (but not within) physically isolated regions in the south, including Iberia. In those regions we find evidence for a stronger influence from natural processes than may be expected for a species with such strong, known anthropogenic influence.
Highlights
The evolution of biodiversity in natural systems is driven by various factors, both environmental and biotic
All marker loci were polymorphic across the whole sample but some were monomorphic within populations and showed fixed differences
Significant deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) within southern population samples was rare after Bonferroni correction
Summary
The evolution of biodiversity in natural systems is driven by various factors, both environmental and biotic (see Benton, 2009). Environmental factors can include the changing distribution of resources, vicariance events separating populations into allopatry and displacement into refugia. By the time we reach the modern era, many species’ distributions will have been affected by human-induced habitat fragmentation, exploitation and translocation. Comparing affected populations allows us to test the hypotheses about the more general mechanisms and processes for the evolution of intraspecific diversity, and to draw inference about effective conservation strategies. In this study we investigate the relative contributions of anthropogenic and natural processes for the European fallow deer (Dama dama dama), a species that has been integrated into human culture since the Neolithic (Yannouli and Trantalidou, 1999)
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