Genetic analysis of snowshoe hare population structure ...

• Main Author: Burton, Cole
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Alaska; Yukon
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0090075; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0090075

Snowshoe hares are distributed throughout the boreal forests of North America and play a key role in the functioning of these ecosystems. Very little is known about the social and genetic structure of snowshoe hare populations. In this thesis, I used seven microsatellite DNA markers to investigate three levels of hare population structure: mating structure, social structure and geographic structure. I sampled 382 hares at 12 sites in southwestern Yukon (separated by 3-140 km) from April to August 1999, during a peak phase of the 10-year hare cycle. I also obtained samples from interior Alaska (n = 27) and western Montana (n = 19) for comparison. Genetic diversity was high, with 5 to 37 alleles per locus (mean = 13.4) and an overall expected heterozygosity of 0.67. At the level of mating structure, the genotypes of 65 newborn hares from 17 litters indicated that multiple paternity occurred at a low to moderate frequency (-25-30%), and that reproductive success was fairly widespread among male hares. In terms ...