Reliability of genetic bottleneck tests for detecting recent population declines

The identification of population bottlenecks is critical in conservation because populations that have experienced significant reductions in abundance are subject to a variety of genetic and demographic processes that can hasten extinction. Genetic bottleneck tests constitute an appealing and popular approach for determining if a population decline has occurred because they only require sampling at a single point in time, yet reflect demographic history over multiple generations. However, a review of the published literature indicates that, as typically applied, microsatellite-based bottleneck tests often do not detect bottlenecks in vertebrate populations known to have experienced declines. This observation…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UE
  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• HU
  Harvard University