Scientific Reports (Jan 2023)

Inferring genetic structure when there is little: population genetics versus genomics of the threatened bat Miniopterus schreibersii across Europe

  • Christophe Dufresnes,
  • Ludovic Dutoit,
  • Alan Brelsford,
  • Fardo Goldstein-Witsenburg,
  • Laura Clément,
  • Adria López-Baucells,
  • Jorge Palmeirim,
  • Igor Pavlinić,
  • Dino Scaravelli,
  • Martin Ševčík,
  • Philippe Christe,
  • Jérôme Goudet

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27988-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

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Abstract Despite their paramount importance in molecular ecology and conservation, genetic diversity and structure remain challenging to quantify with traditional genotyping methods. Next-generation sequencing holds great promises, but this has not been properly tested in highly mobile species. In this article, we compared microsatellite and RAD-sequencing (RAD-seq) analyses to investigate population structure in the declining bent-winged bat (Miniopterus schreibersii) across Europe. Both markers retrieved general patterns of weak range-wide differentiation, little sex-biased dispersal, and strong isolation by distance that associated with significant genetic structure between the three Mediterranean Peninsulas, which could have acted as glacial refugia. Microsatellites proved uninformative in individual-based analyses, but the resolution offered by genomic SNPs illuminated on regional substructures within several countries, with colonies sharing migrators of distinct ancestry without admixture. This finding is consistent with a marked philopatry and spatial partitioning between mating and rearing grounds in the species, which was suspected from marked-recaptured data. Our study advocates that genomic data are necessary to properly unveil the genetic footprints left by biogeographic processes and social organization in long-distant flyers, which are otherwise rapidly blurred by their high levels of gene flow.