Strong Population Genetic Structure for the Endangered Micro-Trapdoor Spider Moggridgea rainbowi (Mygalomorphae, Migidae) in Unburnt Habitat after Catastrophic Bushfires
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2023
Authors
Marsh, J.R.
Bradford, T.M.
Cooper, S.J.B.
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Diversity, 2023; 15(7)
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Jessica R. Marsh, Tessa M. Bradford, and Steven J. B. Cooper
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Abstract
Catastrophic wildfires impacted large areas of western Kangaroo Island (KI), South Australia
in 2019–2020, burning habitat for many species, including large proportions of the distributional
range of the KI micro-trapdoor spider Moggridgea rainbowi, which led to it being listed as Endangered
under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act). In order to
assess population genetic structure in M. rainbowi and detect diagnosable lineages and their distributional
patterns across KI, 28 individuals were genotyped for 2495 loci, sampling from all known
populations of the species. Population genetic and phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and mitochondrial
sequence data provided strong support for three Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs) within
M. rainbowi; two populations on eastern KI and a heavily fire-impacted western population. High levels
of divergence and fixed allelic differences between 5 and 16% indicate a lack of gene flow between
ESUs and long periods of isolation. Distributional patterns of these lineages match likely locations of
isolation events caused by successive changes to sea level during the Quaternary (2.58 million years
ago to present), which led to KI being intermittently connected to the mainland or separated into one
or more islands. Our findings have strong conservation implications for M. rainbowi and highlight
the importance of inclusion of population genetic structure to inform conservation strategies and to
conserve lineage biodiversity at the species level and below.
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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).