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Fifty years of conservation genetics: A personal perspective
Abstract
I provide my personal perspective of the application of genetics to
conservation. I began graduate school shortly after the first
description of genetic variation in natural populations. The use of
allozymes uncovered an unexpected amount of genetic variation in a wide
variety of species. During this same period, Motoo Kimura proposed The
Neutral Theory of Evolution. Understanding the adaptive significance of
allozyme variation became the major focus of population genetics. The
utility of population genetic data for conservation and management was
questioned because if the observed patterns were determined primarily by
selection, then they could not be used to estimate gene flow or genetic
drift. The study of mitochondrial DNA next provided a different view of
genetic variation by allowing the overlaying of genealogical information
on the locations of sampled individuals (phylogeography). The
introduction of microsatellites allowed the study of a large number of
nuclear markers. The many loci and large number of alleles at
microsatellites were valuable for detecting bottlenecks and identifying
relationships of individuals. The use of single nucleotide polymorphisms
next opened the door to genomic analysis that allowed sampling a mapped
genome to detect forces affecting particular genomic regions instead of
using a representative sample of loci. For example, using runs of
homozygosity has revolutionized our understanding of the effects of
inbreeding and the detection of inbreeding depression. Current
techniques provide unprecedented power to study genetic variation in
natural populations. Nevertheless, application of this information
requires sound understanding of population genetics theory.