title: Museum DNA reveals the demographic history of the endangered Seychelles warbler.
abstract: The importance of evolutionary conservation - how understanding evolutionary forces can help guide conservation decisions - is widely recognized. However, the historical demography of many endangered species is unknown, despite the fact that this can have important implications for contemporary ecological processes and for extinction risk. Here, we reconstruct the population history of the Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) - an ecological model species. By the 1960s, this species was on the brink of extinction, but its previous history is unknown. We used DNA samples from contemporary and museum specimens spanning 140 years to reconstruct bottleneck history. We found a 25% reduction in genetic diversity between museum and contemporary populations, and strong genetic structure. Simulations indicate that the Seychelles warbler was bottlenecked from a large population, with an ancestral N e of several thousands falling to <50 within the last century. Such a rapid decline, due to anthropogenic factors, has important implications for extinction risk in the Seychelles warbler, and our results will inform conservation practices. Reconstructing the population history of this species also allows us to better understand patterns of genetic diversity, inbreeding and promiscuity in the contemporary populations. Our approaches can be applied across species to test ecological hypotheses and inform conservation.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia Norwich, Norfolk, UK ; Behavioural Ecology and Self-organization Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Lewis G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Spurgin
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia Norwich, Norfolk, UK ; Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility, University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.affiliation: Behavioural Ecology and Self-organization Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van der Velde
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia Norwich, Norfolk, UK ; BirdLife International Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Nigel J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Collar
authors.affiliation: Behavioural Ecology and Self-organization Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Komdeur
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility, University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK.
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Burke
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia Norwich, Norfolk, UK ; Nature Seychelles Roche Caiman, Mahé, Republic of Seychelles.
authors.forename: David S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Richardson
keywords: Acrocephalus sechellensis; approximate Bayesian computation; bird; bottleneck; island; microsatellite