Impact of contemporary and historical landscape structure on neutral and adaptive genetic markers in ground beetle populations
Final Report Abstract
While it is known that genetic diversity is affected both by environmental parameters as well as habitat history, these factors are not often tested together. Therefore, we analyzed 14 microsatellite loci in Abax parallelepipedus, a flightless, forest dwelling ground beetle, from 88 plots in two study regions in Germany. We modeled the effects of historical and environmental variables as well of landscape settings on allelic richness and genetic differentiation in the Biodiversity Exploratories. We found for one region a significant effect of environmental parameters and very low effects of isolation by distance and landscape parameters. We conclude that the genetic diversity in our study species is being driven by current local population sizes via environmental variables and not by historical processes in the studied regions. Moroever, geneflow seems to level out potential effects of former fragmentation and recolonization processes have been mitigated by the large and stable local populations of Abax parallelepipedus in combination with the proximity of the ancient and recent woodlands in the studied landscapes.
