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Michael K Schwartz

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Characterizing genetic structure across a species’ range is relevant for management and conservation as it can be used to define population boundaries and quantify connectivity. Here, we characterized population structure and estimated effective migration in Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). Our objectives were to (1) describe large-scale patterns of population genetic structure and gene flow and (2) to characterize genetic subpopulation centers across the range of Greater Sage-grouse. Samples from 2,134 individuals were genotyped at 15 microsatellite loci. Using standard STRUCTURE and spatial principal components analyses, we found evidence for four or six areas of large-scale genetic differentiation...
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Conserving genetic connectivity is fundamental to species persistence, yet rarely is made actionable into spatial planning for imperiled species. Climate change and habitat degradation have added urgency to embrace connectivity into networks of protected areas. Our two-step process integrates a network model with a functional connectivity model, to identify population centers important to maintaining genetic connectivity then to delineate those pathways most likely to facilitate connectivity thereamong for the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus); a species of conservation concern ranging across eleven western U.S. states and into two Canadian provinces. This replicable process yielded spatial action...
The Canadian portion of the Crown of the Continent (CCoC) ecosystem has been identified as crucial for wolverines north of the US border to ‘rescue’ or supply individuals and genes through dispersal to the highly fragmented population in the northern US Rocky Mountains. Highway 3, motorized recreation, and a growing resource extraction industry, however, increasingly fragment this critical landscape. This project will capitalize on multi-year wolverine occupancy and genetic data collected noninvasively in a >40,000 km2 area encompassing the core protected areas of the central Canadian Rocky Mountains to the north; and Glacier-Waterton Lakes National Park complex in the south. Our goal is to obtain spatially-explicit...
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