Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population
The leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea is the most widely distributed sea turtle species in the world. It exhibits complex life traits: female homing and migration, migrations of juveniles and males that remain poorly known, and a strong climatic influence on resources, breeding success and sex...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3596356 2023-05-15T17:45:28+02:00 Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population Molfetti, Érica Torres Vilaça, Sibelle Georges, Jean-Yves Plot, Virginie Delcroix, Eric Le Scao, Rozen Lavergne, Anne Barrioz, Sébastien dos Santos, Fabrício Rodrigues de Thoisy, Benoît 2013-03-13 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3596356 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23516429 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058061 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3596356 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23516429 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058061 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2013 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058061 2013-09-04T21:04:11Z The leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea is the most widely distributed sea turtle species in the world. It exhibits complex life traits: female homing and migration, migrations of juveniles and males that remain poorly known, and a strong climatic influence on resources, breeding success and sex-ratio. It is consequently challenging to understand population dynamics. Leatherbacks are critically endangered, yet the group from the Northwest Atlantic is currently considered to be under lower risk than other populations while hosting some of the largest rookeries. Here, we investigated the genetic diversity and the demographic history of contrasted rookeries from this group, namely two large nesting populations in French Guiana, and a smaller one in the French West Indies. We used 10 microsatellite loci, of which four are newly isolated, and mitochondrial DNA sequences of the control region and cytochrome b. Both mitochondrial and nuclear markers revealed that the Northwest Atlantic stock of leatherbacks derives from a single ancestral origin, but show current genetic structuration at the scale of nesting sites, with the maintenance of migrants amongst rookeries. Low nuclear genetic diversities are related to founder effects that followed consequent bottlenecks during the late Pleistocene/Holocene. Most probably in response to climatic oscillations, with a possible influence of early human hunting, female effective population sizes collapsed from 2 million to 200. Evidence of founder effects and high numbers of migrants make it possible to reconsider the population dynamics of the species, formerly considered as a metapopulation model: we propose a more relaxed island model, which we expect to be a key element in the currently observed recovering of populations. Although these Northwest Atlantic rookeries should be considered as a single evolutionary unit, we stress that local conservation efforts remain necessary since each nesting site hosts part of the genetic diversity and species history. Text Northwest Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 8 3 e58061 |
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Research Article Molfetti, Érica Torres Vilaça, Sibelle Georges, Jean-Yves Plot, Virginie Delcroix, Eric Le Scao, Rozen Lavergne, Anne Barrioz, Sébastien dos Santos, Fabrício Rodrigues de Thoisy, Benoît Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population |
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Research Article |
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The leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea is the most widely distributed sea turtle species in the world. It exhibits complex life traits: female homing and migration, migrations of juveniles and males that remain poorly known, and a strong climatic influence on resources, breeding success and sex-ratio. It is consequently challenging to understand population dynamics. Leatherbacks are critically endangered, yet the group from the Northwest Atlantic is currently considered to be under lower risk than other populations while hosting some of the largest rookeries. Here, we investigated the genetic diversity and the demographic history of contrasted rookeries from this group, namely two large nesting populations in French Guiana, and a smaller one in the French West Indies. We used 10 microsatellite loci, of which four are newly isolated, and mitochondrial DNA sequences of the control region and cytochrome b. Both mitochondrial and nuclear markers revealed that the Northwest Atlantic stock of leatherbacks derives from a single ancestral origin, but show current genetic structuration at the scale of nesting sites, with the maintenance of migrants amongst rookeries. Low nuclear genetic diversities are related to founder effects that followed consequent bottlenecks during the late Pleistocene/Holocene. Most probably in response to climatic oscillations, with a possible influence of early human hunting, female effective population sizes collapsed from 2 million to 200. Evidence of founder effects and high numbers of migrants make it possible to reconsider the population dynamics of the species, formerly considered as a metapopulation model: we propose a more relaxed island model, which we expect to be a key element in the currently observed recovering of populations. Although these Northwest Atlantic rookeries should be considered as a single evolutionary unit, we stress that local conservation efforts remain necessary since each nesting site hosts part of the genetic diversity and species history. |
format |
Text |
author |
Molfetti, Érica Torres Vilaça, Sibelle Georges, Jean-Yves Plot, Virginie Delcroix, Eric Le Scao, Rozen Lavergne, Anne Barrioz, Sébastien dos Santos, Fabrício Rodrigues de Thoisy, Benoît |
author_facet |
Molfetti, Érica Torres Vilaça, Sibelle Georges, Jean-Yves Plot, Virginie Delcroix, Eric Le Scao, Rozen Lavergne, Anne Barrioz, Sébastien dos Santos, Fabrício Rodrigues de Thoisy, Benoît |
author_sort |
Molfetti, Érica |
title |
Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population |
title_short |
Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population |
title_full |
Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population |
title_fullStr |
Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population |
title_full_unstemmed |
Recent Demographic History and Present Fine-Scale Structure in the Northwest Atlantic Leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) Turtle Population |
title_sort |
recent demographic history and present fine-scale structure in the northwest atlantic leatherback (dermochelys coriacea) turtle population |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2013 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3596356 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23516429 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058061 |
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Northwest Atlantic |
genre_facet |
Northwest Atlantic |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3596356 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23516429 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058061 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058061 |
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PLoS ONE |
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8 |
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3 |
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e58061 |
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1766148504479072256 |