Biological Impacts of Climatic Change on a Beringian Endemic: Cryptic Refugia in the Establishment and Differentiation of the Rock Sandpiper (Calidris Ptilocnemis)

Abstract

Abstract. The importance of climatic change on the establishment and differentiation of high-latitude species is largely unknown. Biological effects of historic climate change can be determined from historic signals in genetic data. The rock sandpiper (Calidris ptilocnemis) is a good test case for examining these biological effects because it has a known sister species, the purple sandpiper (Calidris maritima), and it is the only endemic Beringian bird with multiple described subspecies, suggesting a process of initial establishment and subsequent differentiation in the high-latitude regions of Beringia. We sequenced 2,074 bp of mitochondrial DNA from 40 rock sandpipers from nine breeding locations and four purple sandpipers. We used phylogenetic and coalescence methods to reconstruct trees and to evaluate the population demography, migration rates, and relative times of population divergence. Phylogenetic trees show that purple and rock sandpipers are monophyletic sister species. Within the rock sandpiper, clade branching patterns and coalescence estimates suggest that there were multiple refugial populations in Beringia, which correspond loosely to different glacial cycles. Rock sandpipers show the establishment, persistence, and accumulation of partitioned genetic diversity across several glacial cycles, implicating the presence of multiple cryptic biological refugia in this region through repeated cycles of climate change.

Ways to be different: foraging adaptations that facilitate higher intake rates in a northerly-wintering shorebird compared to a low-latitude conspecific

“…The rock sandpiper is among several polymorphic Beringian endemic species (e.g. Abbott and Brochmann, 2003;Cook et al, 2005;Dawson et al, 2014;Pruett and Winker, 2005) whose polymorphy has been shaped by rapid, dynamic geologic processes throughout the region (Hopkins, 1959(Hopkins, , 1973. The final formation of Cook Inlet as a geographic feature is believed to have occurred ∼14,000 years ago (Reger et al, 2007;Schmoll et al, 1999) and fossil evidence indicates immediate colonization of the region thereafter by Macoma (Schmoll et al, 1972).…”

Identical metabolic rate and thermal conductance in Rock Sandpiper(Calidris ptilocnemis)subspecies with contrasting nonbreeding life histories

“…DOI: 10.1525DOI: 10. /auk.2012 JanuaRy 2013 -equality of Rock sanDPiPeR metabolic morphology (Conover 1944) and genetic analyses (Pruett and Winker 2005), and the subspecies exhibit differential migration patterns. Two subspecies (C. p. couesi and C. p. quarta) are essentially nonmigratory, moving primarily between upland breeding sites and coastal nonbreeding sites.…”

Genetic Structure of the Common Eider in the Western Aleutian Islands Prior to Fox Eradication

“…Many phenotypically based subspecies of birds have been described from these islands (Gibson and Withrow 2015), and population genetics research has often supported this taxonomy, although disagreements between genetic and phenotypic datasets at these shallow levels of divergence are expected to be frequent (Shields and Wilson 1987, Holder et al 2004, Pruett and Winker 2005a, 2005b, Pruett et al 2010, Winker 2010.…”