What is it about?
When individuals are spatially aggregated, each aggregate is considered as a whole population and pairwise measures of genetic differentiation are computed among aggregates using classical inter-population metrics such as Fst. However, sampling 20-30 individuals per aggregate ultimately leads to a decrease in the number of sampled aggregates, and thus in the spatial coverage of landscape genetic studies. Here, we showed how sampling a limited number of individuals per aggregate allowed a substantial increase in the efficiency of spatial genetic analyses, often at lower costs.
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Why is it important?
Sampling a limited number of individuals per population and considering inter-individual measures of genetic differentiation allowed a far better detection of key patterns such isolation by distance and isolation by barriers, often with a limited total number of genotyped individuals but an optimized number of sampled populations.
Perspectives
Given the objectives of the study and the financial constraints, the proposed sampling scheme may allow a better understanding of the impacts of landscape configuration on genetic structure than a classical popualtion-based approach.
Dr Jérôme G. Prunier
Station d'Ecologie Expérimentale du CNRS à Moulis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Optimizing the trade-off between spatial and genetic sampling efforts in patchy populations: towards a better assessment of functional connectivity using an individual-based sampling scheme, Molecular Ecology, October 2013, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/mec.12499.
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