Reconstructing eight decades of genetic variation in an isolated Danish population of the large blue butterfly Maculinea arion

摘要: Fragmentation of terrestrial ecosystems has had detrimental effects on metapopulations habitat specialists. Maculinea butterflies have been particularly affected because their specialized lifecycles, requiring both specific food-plants and host-ants. However, the interaction between dispersal, effective population size, long-term genetic erosion these endangered remains unknown. Using non-destructive sampling, we investigated diversity last extant M. arion in Denmark, which experienced critically low numbers 1980s. nine microsatellite markers, show that is genetically impoverished compared to nearby populations Sweden, but less so than monitoring programs suggested. Ten additional short repeat microsatellites were used reconstruct changes structure over 77 years from museum specimens. We also tested amplification efficiency such historical samples as a function length sample age. Low 1980s did not affect diversity, considerable turnover alleles characterized this throughout time-span our analysis. Our results suggest sensitive via bottlenecks previously thought, managing clusters high quality may be key for conservation.