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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 61(11)

Historic and current genetic population structure in two pond-dwelling macroinvertebrates in massively altered Australian woodland landscapes

Hania Lada A , Carla Neville A , Briarna Lacey A , Ralph Mac Nally A , P. Sam Lake A and Andrea C. Taylor A B
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- Author Affiliations

A Australian Centre for Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University,Vic. 3800, Australia.

B Corresponding author. Email: andrea.taylor@monash.edu

Marine and Freshwater Research 61(11) 1318-1326 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF10053
Submitted: 25 February 2010  Accepted: 7 July 2010   Published: 16 November 2010

Abstract

Aquatic ecosystems around the world have been massively altered through vegetation clearance and changed flow regimes accompanying agricultural development. Impacts may include disrupted dispersal for aquatic species. We investigated this in lentic (standing) waterbodies in agricultural and predominantly forested landscapes of the box-ironbark region of central Victoria, Australia. We hypothesised that higher representation in forested than agricultural landscapes (i.e. ‘forest-bias’) for a species may reflect an ability to disperse more easily through the former, resulting in lower genetic structure in forested than in agricultural landscapes. Conversely, ‘cosmopolitan’ species would show no difference in genetic structure between landscape types. Molecular genetic analyses of a forest-biased diving beetle, Necterosoma wollastoni, and a cosmopolitan waterboatman, Micronecta gracilis, revealed the following, for both species: (1) no evidence for long-term barriers to gene flow in the region, (2) lack of contemporary genetic differentiation over 30 000 km2 and (3) random distribution of related genotypes in space, implying that neither forest nor farmland inhibits their dispersal in a concerted fashion. Taken together, these results indicate very high gene flow and dispersal in the past and present for both these species. Massive landscape change may have little impact on movement patterns of lentic invertebrates that have evolved high dispersal capabilities.

Additional keywords: landscape permeability, molecular ecology, population genetics.


Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0664065). We thank David Reid, Jarom Stanaway, James Thomson, Gregory Horrocks, Tara Draper, Nich Walker and Alexandra Pavlova as well as two anonymous reviewers for help with fieldwork, laboratory work, analysis and/or comments on the manuscript. This is publication no. 196 from the Australian Centre for Biodiversity.


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