TY - JOUR
T1 - Tracing the first steps of American sturgeon pioneers in Europe
AU - Ludwig, Arne
AU - Arndt, Ursula
AU - Lippold, Sebastian
AU - Benecke, Norbert
AU - Debus, Lutz
AU - King, Timothy L.
AU - Matsumura, Shuichi
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG LU 852/ 5-1). We thank Joachim Burger and Michael Hofreiter for their support prior and during ancient DNA analysis, Dietmar Lieckfeldt for technical assistance; Jenny Giles, Jörns Fickel, Michael Hofreiter and three reviewer for their valuable and helpful comments.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Background. A Baltic population of Atlantic sturgeon was founded ∼1,200 years ago by migrants from North America, but after centuries of persistence, the population was extirpated in the 1960s, mainly as a result of over-harvest and habitat alterations. As there are four genetically distinct groups of Atlantic sturgeon inhabiting North American rivers today, we investigated the genetic provenance of the historic Baltic population by ancient DNA analyses using mitochondrial and nuclear markers. Results. The phylogeographic signal obtained from multilocus microsatellite DNA genotypes and mitochondrial DNA control region haplotypes, when compared to existing baseline datasets from extant populations, allowed for the identification of the region-of-origin of the North American Atlantic sturgeon founders. Moreover, statistical and simulation analyses of the multilocus genotypes allowed for the calculation of the effective number of individuals that originally founded the European population of Atlantic sturgeon. Our findings suggest that the Baltic population of A. oxyrinchus descended from a relatively small number of founders originating from the northern extent of the species' range in North America. Conclusion. These results demonstrate that the most northerly distributed North American A. oxyrinchus colonized the Baltic Sea ∼1,200 years ago, suggesting that Canadian specimens should be the primary source of broodstock used for restoration in Baltic rivers. This study illustrates the great potential of patterns obtained from ancient DNA to identify population-of-origin to investigate historic genotype structure of extinct populations.
AB - Background. A Baltic population of Atlantic sturgeon was founded ∼1,200 years ago by migrants from North America, but after centuries of persistence, the population was extirpated in the 1960s, mainly as a result of over-harvest and habitat alterations. As there are four genetically distinct groups of Atlantic sturgeon inhabiting North American rivers today, we investigated the genetic provenance of the historic Baltic population by ancient DNA analyses using mitochondrial and nuclear markers. Results. The phylogeographic signal obtained from multilocus microsatellite DNA genotypes and mitochondrial DNA control region haplotypes, when compared to existing baseline datasets from extant populations, allowed for the identification of the region-of-origin of the North American Atlantic sturgeon founders. Moreover, statistical and simulation analyses of the multilocus genotypes allowed for the calculation of the effective number of individuals that originally founded the European population of Atlantic sturgeon. Our findings suggest that the Baltic population of A. oxyrinchus descended from a relatively small number of founders originating from the northern extent of the species' range in North America. Conclusion. These results demonstrate that the most northerly distributed North American A. oxyrinchus colonized the Baltic Sea ∼1,200 years ago, suggesting that Canadian specimens should be the primary source of broodstock used for restoration in Baltic rivers. This study illustrates the great potential of patterns obtained from ancient DNA to identify population-of-origin to investigate historic genotype structure of extinct populations.
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U2 - 10.1186/1471-2148-8-221
DO - 10.1186/1471-2148-8-221
M3 - Article
C2 - 18664258
AN - SCOPUS:51049086586
SN - 1471-2148
VL - 8
JO - BMC Evolutionary Biology
JF - BMC Evolutionary Biology
IS - 1
M1 - 221
ER -