Study objectives
Our first objective is to determine if there is significant genetic differentiation between mountain treeshrews on MT and MK, which would have implications for conservation monitoring and management of the species in KNP and beyond. Our second goal is to assess population genetic structure across the species’ elevational extent on both peaks. We test the hypothesis that gene flow is restricted across the steep ecological gradient that mountain treeshrews inhabit. We predict that mountain treeshrews will exhibit significant differentiation in neutral genetic markers 1) between mountain peaks, due to limited dispersal across the lowland habitat that connects them, and 2) across elevations – with greater differentiation on MK due to its higher elevation and associated environmental variability. Our final objective is to evaluate the utility of ultraconserved element (UCE) loci for estimating population genetic parameters and structure at fine geographic scales within a species. Previous studies have shown that UCEs are sufficiently variable to resolve phylogenies on a phylogeographic scale (e.g. Harvey, Smith, Glenn, Faircloth, & Brumfield, 2016; Mason, Olvera-Vital, Lovette, & Navarro- Sigüenza, 2018; Smith, Harvey, Faircloth, Glenn, & Brumfield, 2014) and to answer questions regarding recently diverged species (Oswald et al., 2016; Winker, Glenn, & Faircloth, 2018). However, based on a Web of Knowledge literature search (accessed April 12, 2020) using the keywords ‘population’ AND ‘ultraconserved element’, ours is the first study to use these markers to study population genetics at a landscape scale. We describe a modified UCE processing pipeline to generate single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and phased pseudo-haplotype sequence datasets.