Open this publication in new window or tab >>2011 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
Black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) is a bird species with a lek mating system found in the Palearctic boreal taiga. It is assumed that it has a continuous distribution along Scandinavia and Siberia, whereas in Central Europe it has declined during the last decades. The primary objective of this thesis was to obtain a deeper understanding of the history, systematic classification and the genetic structure of black grouse on different geographical scales using microsatellites and control region mtDNA sequences (CR). I determined how much the mating system, habitat fragmentation and historical population processes have influenced the partitioning of genetic diversity in this species. Phylogeographical results are consistent with a demographic population expansion, and the patterns of postglacial dispersal suggest that a glacial refugium was located somewhere in central Asia, and from there black grouse spread out to Europe following the retreat of glacial ice sheets. I suggest that the two European black grouse subspecies, T. t. Tetrix and T. t. britannicus correspond to only one subspecies: T. t. tetrix, and that this lineage has diverged from T.t. viridanus, a subspecies found in Kazakhstan. The British population is significantly divergent from the remaining Eurasian samples for microsatellites but it is not for mtDNA. Therefore, they should regard as a separate Management Unit and not as a subspecies. Furthermore, British black grouse occur in three independent genetic units, corresponding to Wales, northern England/southern Scotland and northern Scotland. There was also genetic structure within Sweden. Habitat fragmentation is the main cause of population genetic structure in southern Swedish black grouse. In contrast, low levels of genetic differentiation and high connectivity were found in northern Sweden due to female-biased dispersal. On a finer geographical scale, I found genetic differences between leks due to a mixture of related and unrelated individuals within leks. However, mean relatedness values hardly differed from zero. Some leks were similar to one another and I interpret this as a result of variation in local reproductive success and philopatry. These factors would cause genetic structuring but this by itself would not reveal that kin selection is operating within black grouse leks.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2011. p. 47
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology, ISSN 1651-6214 ; 816
Keywords
black grouse, control region, demographic expansion, kin selection, lek, microsatellites, non-invasive sampling, postglacial colonisation, philopatry, phylogeography, sex-biased dispersal, spatial genetics, subspecies, suture zone, refugia
National Category
Biological Sciences Biological Systematics
Research subject
Biology with specialization in Population Biology
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-150117 (URN)978-91-554-8048-6 (ISBN)
Public defence
2011-05-13, Zootissalen, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Villavägen 9, Uppsala, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
2011-04-192011-03-252011-05-05Bibliographically approved