Register      Login
Marine and Freshwater Research Marine and Freshwater Research Society
Advances in the aquatic sciences
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Historic and current genetic population structure in two pond-dwelling macroinvertebrates in massively altered Australian woodland landscapes

Hania Lada A , Carla Neville A , Briarna Lacey A , Ralph Mac Nally A , P. Sam Lake A and Andrea C. Taylor A B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Australian Centre for Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University,Vic. 3800, Australia.

B Corresponding author. Email: andrea.taylor@monash.edu

Marine and Freshwater Research 61(11) 1318-1326 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF10053
Submitted: 25 February 2010  Accepted: 7 July 2010   Published: 16 November 2010

Abstract

Aquatic ecosystems around the world have been massively altered through vegetation clearance and changed flow regimes accompanying agricultural development. Impacts may include disrupted dispersal for aquatic species. We investigated this in lentic (standing) waterbodies in agricultural and predominantly forested landscapes of the box-ironbark region of central Victoria, Australia. We hypothesised that higher representation in forested than agricultural landscapes (i.e. ‘forest-bias’) for a species may reflect an ability to disperse more easily through the former, resulting in lower genetic structure in forested than in agricultural landscapes. Conversely, ‘cosmopolitan’ species would show no difference in genetic structure between landscape types. Molecular genetic analyses of a forest-biased diving beetle, Necterosoma wollastoni, and a cosmopolitan waterboatman, Micronecta gracilis, revealed the following, for both species: (1) no evidence for long-term barriers to gene flow in the region, (2) lack of contemporary genetic differentiation over 30 000 km2 and (3) random distribution of related genotypes in space, implying that neither forest nor farmland inhibits their dispersal in a concerted fashion. Taken together, these results indicate very high gene flow and dispersal in the past and present for both these species. Massive landscape change may have little impact on movement patterns of lentic invertebrates that have evolved high dispersal capabilities.

Additional keywords: landscape permeability, molecular ecology, population genetics.


Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0664065). We thank David Reid, Jarom Stanaway, James Thomson, Gregory Horrocks, Tara Draper, Nich Walker and Alexandra Pavlova as well as two anonymous reviewers for help with fieldwork, laboratory work, analysis and/or comments on the manuscript. This is publication no. 196 from the Australian Centre for Biodiversity.


References

Andersen N. M., and Weir T. A. (2004). ‘Australian Water Bugs: Their Biology and Identification (Hemiptera–Heteroptera, Gerromorpha and Nepomorpha).’ (CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne.)

Balloux, F. (2001). EASYPOP (Version 1.7): a computer program for population genetics simulations. Journal of Heredity 92, 301–302.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS | PubMed | Environment Conservation Council (2001). Box-ironbark. Forest and woodlands investigation. Final report. Environment Conservation Council (Victoria), Melbourne.

Eriksen C. H., Resh V. H., Balling S. S., and Lamberti G. A. (1984). Aquatic insect respiration. In ‘An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America’. (Eds R. W. Merritt and K. W. Cummins.) pp. 27–37. (Kendall/Hunt: Dubuque, IA.)

Excoffier, L. , Laval, G. , and Schneider, S. (2005). Arlequin (version 3.0): an integrated software package for population genetics data analysis. Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online 1, 47–50.
CAS | PubMed | Frankham R., Ballou J. D., and Briscoe D. A. (2002). ‘Introduction to Conservation Genetics.’ (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.)

Fu, Y.-X. (1997). Statistical tests of neutrality of mutations against population growth, hitchhiking and background selection. Genetics 147, 915–925.
CAS | PubMed | Hughes J. M., Schmidt D. J., McLean A., and Wheatley A. (2008). Population genetic structure in stream insects: what have we learned? In ‘Aquatic Insects: Challenges to Populations’. (Eds J. Lancaster and R. A. Briers.) pp. 268–288. (CAB International: Wallingford, UK.)

Hurwood, D. A. , Hughes, J. M. , Bunn, S. E. , and Cleary, C. (2003). Population structure in the freshwater shrimp (Paratya australiensis) inferred from allozymes and mitochondrial DNA. Heredity 90, 64–70.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS | PubMed | Pritchard J. K., and Wen W. (2003). Documentation for STRUCTURE software: version 2. Available at http://pritch.bsd.uchicago.edu/software/readme_2_1/readme.html [verified 14 July 2010].

Pritchard, J. K. , Stephens, M. , and Donnelly, P. (2000). Inference of population structure using multilocus genotype data. Genetics 155, 945–959.
CAS | PubMed | Robinson J., and Rowley L. (1996). Drought refuge identification project for the West Loddon, Avoca and Avon–Richardson catchments within the Bendigo Forest Management Area. Victorian Department Natural Resources and Environment, Melbourne.

Short, A. E. Z. , and Caterino, M. S. (2009). On the validity of habitat as a predictor of genetic structure in aquatic systems: a comparative study using California water beetles. Molecular Ecology 18, 403–414.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS | PubMed |

Simon, C. , Frati, F. , Beckenbach, A. , Crespi, B. , and Liu, H. , et al. (1994). Evolution, weighting and phylogenetic utility of mitochondrial gene-sequences and a compilation of conserved polymerase chain-reaction primers. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 87, 651–701.
CAS |

Smouse, P. E. , and Peakall, R. (1999). Spatial autocorrelation analysis of individual multiallele and multilocus genetic structure. Heredity 82, 561–573.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | PubMed |

Sunnucks, P. , Wilson, A. C. C. , Beheregaray, L. B. , Zenger, K. R. , and French, J. , et al. (2000). SSCP is not so difficult: the application and utility of single-stranded conformation polymorphism in evolutionary biology and molecular ecology. Molecular Ecology 9, 1699–1710.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS | PubMed |

Tajima, F. (1983). Evolutionary relationship of DNA sequences in finite populations. Genetics 105, 437–460.
CAS | PubMed |

Tamura, K. , Dudley, J. , Nei, M. , and Kumar, S. (2007). MEGA 4: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis (MEGA) software version 4.0. Molecular Biology and Evolution 24, 1596–1599.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS | PubMed |

Thompson, R. , and Townsend, C. (2006). A truce with neutral theory: local deterministic factors, species traits and dispersal limitation together determine patterns of diversity in stream invertebrates. Journal of Animal Ecology 75, 476–484.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | PubMed |

Wilson, A. C. C. , Sunnucks, P. , and Barker, J. S. F. (2002). Isolation and characterization of 20 polymorphic microsatellite loci for Scaptodrosophila hibisci. Molecular Ecology Notes 2, 242–244.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS |

Zickovich, J. M. , and Bohonak, A. J. (2007). Dispersal ability and genetic structure in aquatic invertebrates: a comparative study in southern California streams and reservoirs. Freshwater Biology 52, 1982–1996.
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS |