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Presented at the NABS Annual meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2002
in Fish Ecology
LOCAL POPULATIONS IN PATCHES OR IS IT A METAPOPULATION? A CASE STUDY USING MOLECULAR MARKERS.
J.A. Coombs1, F.K. Ammer2, and R.J. McPherson1. 1Department of Biology, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, Clarion, PA 16214, 2Wildlife and Fisheries Research, College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Science, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26505
The idea of stream-resident salmonid movement is an old concept that has recently been reaccepted. How far and how often fish move is still not well understood. Gene flow may be used as an indirect measure of dispersal. With the use of automated sequence analysis we compared sequences of a 346 bp region of mtDNA. We found this region to be polymorphic, having observed seven haplotypes thus far. Using this genetic marker we examined the population structure in brook trout over a small geographic range (< 4 KM) to estimate gene flow among populations from four adjacent headwater tributaries of the Allegheny River (Forest County, PA). Preliminary examination of the data suggests that the haplotypes differ in the frequency distribution among the four populations. Greater than 97% of the variation was explained by haplotype frequency among individuals. Little population differentiation was denoted by the overall Fst value (Fst = 0.023). Pair-wise Fst estimates found only one statistical difference in haplotype frequency among the stream populations (P < 0.05), samples from Dawson and Sibbald Runs (the geographically closest tributaries). These initial results indicate that dispersal of brook trout among these streams is common.
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