Genetic monitoring reveals temporal stability over 30 years in a small lake-residentbrown trout population

摘要

Knowledge of the degree of temporal stability of population genetic structure and composition is important for understanding microevolutionary processes and addressing issues of human impact of natural populations. We know little about how representative single samples in time are to reflect population genetic constitution, and we explore the temporal genetic variability patterns over a 30-year period of annual sampling of a lake-resident brown trout (Salmo trutta) population, covering 37 consecutive cohorts and five generations. Levels of variation remain largely stable over this period, with no indication of substructuring within the lake. We detect genetic drift, however, and the genetically effective population size (Ne) was assessed from allele-frequency shifts between consecutive cohorts using an unbiased estimator that accounts for the effect of overlapping generation. The overall mean Ne is estimated as 74. We find indications that Ne varies over time, but there is no obvious temporal trend. We also estimated Ne using a one-sample approach based on linkage disequilibrium (LD) that does not account for the effect of overlapping generations. Combining one-sample estimates for all years gives an Ne estimate of 76. This similarity between estimates may be coincidental or reflecting a general robustness of the LD approach to violations of thediscrete generations assumption. In contrast to the observed genetic stability, body sizeand catch per effort have increased over the study period. Estimates of annual effectivenumber of breeders (Nb) correlated with catch per effort, suggestingthat genetic monitoring can be used for detecting fluctuations in abundance.