Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Museomics identifies genetic erosion in two butterfly species across the 20th century in Finland

Published inMolecular ecology resources, vol. 20, no. 5, p. 1191-1205
Publication date2020-05-14
First online date2020-05-14
Abstract

Erosion of biodiversity generated by anthropogenic activities has been studied for decades and in many areas at the species level, using taxa monitoring. In contrast, genetic erosion within species has rarely been tracked, and is often studied by inferring past population dynamics from contemporaneous estimators. An alternative to such inferences is the direct examination of past genes, by analysing museum collection specimens. While providing direct access to genetic variation over time, historical DNA is usually not optimally preserved, and it is necessary to apply genotyping methods based on hybridization-capture to unravel past genetic variation. In this study, we apply such a method (i.e., HyRAD), to large time series of two butterfly species in Finland, and present a new bioinformatic pipeline, namely PopHyRAD, that standardizes and optimizes the analysis of HyRAD data at the within-species level. In the localities for which the data retrieved have sufficient power to accurately examine genetic dynamics through time, we show that genetic erosion has increased across the last 100 years, as revealed by signatures of allele extinctions and heterozygosity decreases, despite local variations. In one of the two butterflies (Erebia embla), isolation by distance also increased through time, revealing the effect of greater habitat fragmentation over time.

Keywords
  • HyRAD
  • Lepidoptera
  • Museomics
  • Past gene frequencies
  • Population dynamics
Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
GAUTHIER, Jérémy et al. Museomics identifies genetic erosion in two butterfly species across the 20th century in Finland. In: Molecular ecology resources, 2020, vol. 20, n° 5, p. 1191–1205. doi: 10.1111/1755-0998.13167
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
Identifiers
Journal ISSN1755-098X
2views
18downloads

Technical informations

Creation31/05/2023 14:31:58
First validation08/06/2026 10:10:26
Update08/06/2026 10:10:26
Status update08/06/2026 10:10:26
Last indexation08/06/2026 10:10:27
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack