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Assessing the impact of removal scenarios on population viability of a threatened, long-lived avian scavenger.

ABSTRACT: The removal of eggs or chicks from wild populations to create captive populations, reinforce free-ranging populations or reintroduce species into the wild is a restoration tool that requires an assessment of potential detrimental effects upon the donor population. This is an absolute prerequisite when wild donor populations are scarce and small. Here, we forecast the population trend of the largest European population of the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) over the next 30 years under different demographic and management scenarios (removal of eggs, chicks or fledglings). Projections derived from the combination of a PDP model (Population Dynamic P-system) and a Box-Behnken design would lead to a decline in 77% of all 57 scenarios analysed. Among the 13 scenarios predicting a population increase, only 4 seem realistic in terms of growth rate (0.04%-1.01%), at least if current age at first breeding and productivity would remain constant over time. Our simulations thus suggest that most extraction scenarios would have detrimental effects on the demography of the donor population. Release of captive-born young or removal of only the second hatched chick for subsequent captive rearing and translocation into the wild appear to represent much better supplementation and reintroduction options in this threatened species.

SUBMITTER: Margalida A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4655339 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Assessing the impact of removal scenarios on population viability of a threatened, long-lived avian scavenger.

Margalida Antoni A Margalida Antoni A Colomer Ma Àngels MÀ Oro Daniel D Arlettaz Raphaël R Donázar José A JA

Scientific reports 20151123

The removal of eggs or chicks from wild populations to create captive populations, reinforce free-ranging populations or reintroduce species into the wild is a restoration tool that requires an assessment of potential detrimental effects upon the donor population. This is an absolute prerequisite when wild donor populations are scarce and small. Here, we forecast the population trend of the largest European population of the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) over the next 30 years under differ ...[more]

PMID: 26593059

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Project description:BackgroundIn a rapidly changing world, it is of fundamental importance to understand processes constraining or facilitating adaptation through microevolution. As different traits of an organism covary, genetic correlations are expected to affect evolutionary trajectories. However, only limited empirical data are available.Methodology/principal findingsWe investigate the extent to which multivariate constraints affect the rate of adaptation, focusing on four morphological traits often shown to harbour large amounts of genetic variance and considered to be subject to limited evolutionary constraints. Our data set includes unique long-term data for seven bird species and a total of 10 populations. We estimate population-specific matrices of genetic correlations and multivariate selection coefficients to predict evolutionary responses to selection. Using Bayesian methods that facilitate the propagation of errors in estimates, we compare (1) the rate of adaptation based on predicted response to selection when including genetic correlations with predictions from models where these genetic correlations were set to zero and (2) the multivariate evolvability in the direction of current selection to the average evolvability in random directions of the phenotypic space. We show that genetic correlations on average decrease the predicted rate of adaptation by 28%. Multivariate evolvability in the direction of current selection was systematically lower than average evolvability in random directions of space. These significant reductions in the rate of adaptation and reduced evolvability were due to a general nonalignment of selection and genetic variance, notably orthogonality of directional selection with the size axis along which most (60%) of the genetic variance is found.ConclusionsThese results suggest that genetic correlations can impose significant constraints on the evolution of avian morphology in wild populations. This could have important impacts on evolutionary dynamics and hence population persistence in the face of rapid environmental change.

Project description:The Australian lungfish is a unique living representative of an ancient dipnoan lineage, listed as 'vulnerable' to extinction under Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Historical accounts indicate this species occurred naturally in two adjacent river systems in Australia, the Burnett and Mary. Current day populations in other rivers are thought to have arisen by translocation from these source populations. Early genetic work detected very little variation and so had limited power to answer questions relevant for management including how genetic variation is partitioned within and among sub-populations. In this study, we use newly developed microsatellite markers to examine samples from the Burnett and Mary Rivers, as well as from two populations thought to be of translocated origin, Brisbane and North Pine. We test whether there is significant genetic structure among and within river drainages; assign putatively translocated populations to potential source populations; and estimate effective population sizes. Eleven polymorphic microsatellite loci genotyped in 218 individuals gave an average within-population heterozygosity of 0.39 which is low relative to other threatened taxa and for freshwater fishes in general. Based on FST values (average over loci = 0.11) and STRUCTURE analyses, we identify three distinct populations in the natural range, one in the Burnett and two distinct populations in the Mary. These analyses also support the hypothesis that the Mary River is the likely source of translocated populations in the Brisbane and North Pine rivers, which agrees with historical published records of a translocation event giving rise to these populations. We were unable to obtain bounded estimates of effective population size, as we have too few genotype combinations, although point estimates were low, ranging from 29 - 129. We recommend that, in order to preserve any local adaptation in the three distinct populations that they be managed separately.

Dataset Information

Assessing the impact of removal scenarios on population viability of a threatened, long-lived avian scavenger.

Publications

Assessing the impact of removal scenarios on population viability of a threatened, long-lived avian scavenger.

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