Browsing by Author "Stanford, Brenna"

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    Conservation genomics of the endangered Banff Springs Snail (Physella johnsoni) using Pool-seq
    (2019-01-07) Stanford, Brenna; Rogers, Sean; Lepitzki, Dwayne; Vamosi, Jana
    Understanding how species persist and adapt to local habitats is a fundamental question for species of conservation concern. Located in Banff National Park, the endangered snail, Physella johnsoni, inhabits seven highly specialized thermal springs. P. johnsoni undergo yearly population bottlenecks with minimal to no dispersal among springs. The consequences of these processes on genetic population structure are unknown. To investigate effects of habitat and life history on P. johnsoni’s genome and to test the hypothesis of a single panmictic population, I collected 20 to 40 snails/population for P. johnsoni and a closely related snail, P. gyrina, in adjacent, non-thermal water. Using whole genome pooled-sequencing, millions of single nucleotide polymorphisms were captured. These genetic variants resolved significant genetic divergence between P. johnsoni and P. gyrina. In addition, I detected distinct genetic clusters and reduced nucleotide diversity within each spring, indicative of strong micro-geographical population structure and suggestive of a role for genetic drift. These results suggest that P. johnsoni from each spring represent a distinct genetic unit, which has conservation implications for the designation of designatable unit status under COSEWIC, and where mixing of snails may reduce the consequences of genetic drift.