Which Latitudinal Gradients for Genetic Diversity?

Paolo Gratton; Silvio Marta; Gaëlle Bocksberger; Marten Winter; Petr Keil; Emiliano Trucchi; Hjalmar Kühl

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2017.07.007

Which Latitudinal Gradients for Genetic Diversity?

Trends Ecol Evol. 2017 Oct;32(10):724-726. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2017.07.007. Epub 2017 Aug 11.

Authors

Paolo Gratton¹, Silvio Marta², Gaëlle Bocksberger³, Marten Winter⁴, Petr Keil⁴, Emiliano Trucchi⁵, Hjalmar Kühl³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: paolo_gratton@eva.mpg.de.
² Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Roma 'Tor Vergata', Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Roma, Italy.
³ Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
⁴ iDiv German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Deutscher Platz 5, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
⁵ Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Ferrara, Via Ludovico Ariosto 35, 44121 Ferrara, Italy.

PMID: 28807398
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2017.07.007

Abstract

A recent global analysis of GenBank DNA sequences from amphibians and mammals indicated consistent poleward decrease of intraspecific genetic diversity in both classes. We highlight that this result was biased by not accounting for distance decay of similarity and reanalyse the datasets, revealing distinct latitudinal gradients in mammals and amphibians.

Keywords: GenBank; distance decay of similarity; genetic diversity; georeferencing; global patterns; phylogeography.

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MeSH terms

Animals
Biodiversity*
Genetic Variation*
Mammals