posted on 2016-11-28, 08:18authored byRaluca I. Băncilă, Jan W. Arntzen
Under
a documented paleogeographic history of the Ria de Arosa archipelago,
northwestern Spain, predictions can be made on the duration and strength of
isolation of Podarcis
guadarramae lizard
populations that were ‘captured’ on the islands when sea-levels rose. We
predict that genetic diversity: i) is lower on islands than on the mainland,
ii) increases with island size, and iii) decreases with increasing distance
from the mainland. We also predict that the population genetic structure across
islands and the mainland conforms to a pattern of isolation by distance (iv).
To test these hypotheses, we analysed a panel of nine highly polymorphic
microsatellite loci. The first (i) hypothesis was corroborated. We discuss our findings
in the light of the effects of habitat fragmentation and lizard conservation.