Abstract
Margaritifera hembeli is a federally threatened freshwater mussel species restricted to three central Louisiana drainages. Currently, management efforts are being formulated without an understanding of population-level genetic patterns, which could result in sub-optimal conservation outcomes. In particular, information about riverscape genetic patterns is needed to design effective propagation and reintroduction plans. We apply a genomic approach (RADseq) to assess genetic diversity and structure among four wild populations sampled from across the species range. We also assess the genetic diversity of a captively reared cohort produced from a single female. We recovered population differentiation between individuals sampled to the north and south of the Red River. All sites had similarly low levels of heterogeneity and other measures of genetic diversity. The captive cohort displayed higher levels of genetic diversity than expected and likely represents a case of multiple paternity. Future propagation efforts will likely be able to produce genetically diverse cohorts from a small number of wild-caught females, and we recommend future reintroduction efforts utilize brooders within the sub-drainage closest to the reintroduction effort.
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Availability of data and material
Demultiplexed Illumina sequence data have been uploaded to NCBI SRA (PRJNA674525). Processed datasets in various file formats and certain program input and output files (e.g., colony) are available on FigShare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11977695).
Code availability
Code related to the execution of pipelines used are available online at https://github.com/nlgarrison/ConservationGenomics.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Jared Streeter (Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries), Ted Soileau, and Steve Shively (US Forest Service) for assistance in the field. Nathan Johnson (US Geological Survey) and Jürgen Geist (Technische Universität München) provided advice on swabbing and extraction methods. A special thanks to the staff of the Alabama Aquatic Biodiversity Center for maintaining captively reared M. hembeli, develo** propagation techniques for the species, and allowing access to tissues. We also thank the landowners who provided access to sampling sites on privately owned land. Two reviewers provided useful feedback that improved this paper. The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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This work was funded by a 1311 system-wide funding Grant from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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NVW and PJ designed the study and performed fieldwork, NVW performed lab work, NLG performed data analysis and wrote the manuscript. All authors edited and approved of the final manuscript.
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Garrison, N.L., Johnson, P.D. & Whelan, N.V. Conservation genomics reveals low genetic diversity and multiple parentage in the threatened freshwater mussel, Margaritifera hembeli. Conserv Genet 22, 217–231 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-020-01329-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-020-01329-8