Journal Update 1: Absence of founder effect and evidence for adaptive divergence in a recently introduced insular population of white‐tailed deer

In this research paper, the authors study the scenario where a small population of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) was introduced to an island from the mainland. About 120 years ago, 220 white-tailed deers were introduced to Anticosti Island in Quebec, Canada, resulting in a modern population of over 160,000 individuals. An island environment can often lead to significant founder effect. Since new populations are derived from a small number of individuals, genetic drift and loss of genetic diversity is common within these island populations.

In this study, the researchers use genotyping-by sequencing (GBS) to generate 8,518 SNPs in order to compare patterns of genetic diversity and differentiation between the mainland and island populations. Clustering analysis shows that there is a relatively weak (<1%) but significant genetic differentiation between the mainland and island populations. The authors believe that this result could be due to the large number of founders (>200) and low rate of genetic drift since the founding of the insular population. The result also reveals that there is no significant differentiation between populations from 3 different regions on the island. Moreover, genetic diversity is actually found to be higher in the Anticosti Island populations than continental populations. This could be a result of a large founding population, providing a representative allelic diversity of the source population. These results support an absence of founder effect in white-tailed deer on Anticosti Island, suggesting that genetic diversity in introduced populations could be retained and potentially increase with a large number of founding individuals. 

Fuller, J., Ferchaud, A.L., Laporte, M., Le Luyer, J., Davis, T.B., Côté, S.D. and Bernatchez, L., 2020. Absence of founder effect and evidence for adaptive divergence in a recently introduced insular population of white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Molecular ecology, 29(1), pp.86-104.

http://www2.bio.ulaval.ca/louisbernatchez/pdf/(458)%20Fuller_Molecular_Ecology_2020.pdf

Molecular Ecology Journal Update

Monica Cheung– April 16, 2020