Population diversity and relatedness in Sugarbirds (Promeropidae: Promerops spp.)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Genetics, Zoology, Population Biology
- Keywords
- ornithology, conservation genetics, sexual selection, molecular ecology, phylogeography, population genetics
- Copyright
- © 2018 Haworth et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Population diversity and relatedness in Sugarbirds (Promeropidae: Promerops spp.) PeerJ Preprints 6:e26619v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26619v1
Abstract
Sugarbirds are a family of two socially-monogamous passerine species endemic to southern Africa. Cape and Gurney’s Sugarbird (Promerops cafer and P. gurneyi) differ in abundance, dispersion across their range and in the degree of sexual dimorphism in tail length, factors that affect breeding systems and potentially genetic diversity. According to recent data, P. gurneyi are in decline and revision of the species’ IUCN conservation status to a threatened category may be warranted. It is therefore necessary to understand genetic diversity and risk of inbreeding in this species. We used six polymorphic microsatellite markers and one mitochondrial gene (ND2) to compare genetic diversity in P. cafer from Cape Town and P. gurneyi from Golden Gate Highlands National Park, sites at the core of each species distribution. We describe novel universal avian primers which amplify the entire ND2 coding sequence across a broad range of bird orders. We observed high mitochondrial and microsatellite diversity in both sugarbird populations, with no detectable inbreeding and large effective population sizes.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.