How do rivers, geographic distance, and dispersal behavior influence genetic structure in two sympatric New World monkeys?

Abstract

Dispersal, one of the major factors affecting the gene flow between populations, shapes the spatial distribution of genetic diversity within species. Alouatta macconnelli and Saguinus midas are two Neotropical monkey species that sympatrically inhabit the Guiana shield in northern Amazonia and are likely to differ in their dispersal behavior and vagility. We took advantage of their sympatry to investigate, over a fine geographical scale (∼50 km long), the relationship between spatial genetic structure, on the one hand, and geographical features and the species' dispersal behavior on the other. A total of 84 A. macconnelli individuals from 25 social units and 76 S. midas individuals from 19 social units were genotyped for nine microsatellite markers. Both species displayed high genetic diversity and allelic richness. However, patterns of genetic structure differed between the two species. In A. macconnelli, no genetic substructuring was observed, while in S. midas we detected significant structuring, but this structuring was not correlated with geographical features, such as the location of individuals relative to the river and/or the distance between them. Instead, the geographical distribution of genetic variation observed for each species is predominantly explained by each species' dispersal pattern. We identified bisexual dispersal for both species, but with significant differences, either in the distance or in the rate of dispersal, between species and sexes. Genetic relatedness within social units was higher in S. midas than in A. macconnelli: gene flow between social units seems limited in S. midas, especially for females, while high dispersal characterizes A. macconnelli, where females seem to disperse at lower rate but at a longer distance than males.

How rivers and historical climate oscillations impact on genetic structure in Chinese Muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi)?

“…Generally, large rivers can act as effective barrier to gene flow in various taxonomic groups, such as mammals (e.g., Canis lupus , Carmichael, Nagy, Larter, & Strobeck, ; Pan paniscus , Eriksson, Hohmann, Boesch, & Vigilant, ), reptiles (e.g., Gymnodactylus darwinii complex, Pellegrino et al., ) and even amphibians (e.g., R. kukunoris , Zhao et al., ; S. boulengeri , Li et al., ; Ichthyophis bannanicus , Wang et al., ; Microhyla fissipes complex, Yuan et al., and N. pleskei , Zhou et al., ). However, rivers cannot limit gene flow in those species capable of swimming (e.g., Lontra canadensis , Blundell, Ben‐David, Groves, Bowyer, & Geffen, ; Ursus americanus , Cushman et al., ) or with high mobility ( Saguinus midas and Alouatta macconnelli , Lecompte, Bouanani, de Thoisy, & Crouau‐Roy, ). For deer species, such as O. virginianus (Robinson et al., ), rivers were often considered as an important geographical barrier.…”

Historical dynamics and current environmental effects explain the spatial distribution of species richness patterns of New World monkeys

“…In contrast, active dispersal of species from the Amazon basin could maintain large sink populations, and such dispersal could be evolutionarily stable, developing a nested structure of species richness. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of dispersal ability and extinction processes in generating the source–sink dynamics and the observed richness pattern, especially considering that some species can be very vagile and have a wide range of distribution that covers areas with low and high available energy ( Ayres & Clutton-Brock, 1992 ; Jablonski, Roy & Valentine, 2006 ; Lecompte et al, 2017 ). Also, our results show that in the Neotropics there is higher species co-occurrence than expected by chance, and the significant nestedness score indicates that interspecific competition may be not a factor that determines the nature of the species richness pattern.…”

“… Ayres & Clutton-Brock (1992) first suggested that Amazonian rivers are effective barriers to primate species dispersal, largely related to their width, seasonal and annual stability, rate of flow, and the ability of species to cross these environmental barriers. However, despite the long-term stability of some of these watercourses, recent studies found no evidence that rivers acts as an effective barrier ( Boubli et al, 2015 ; Lecompte et al, 2017 ). Thus, from a macroecological perspective, these lower and upper boundaries are the most important feature of the relationships between species richness and climatic variables, because they appear to represent a limit to the number of species for a given geographic area and a given combination of habitat properties.…”

“…However, this distribution pattern is not completely consistent with the biodiversity hotspots presented by Myers et al (2000) for the Neotropics. The origins and evolution of such high Platyrrhine diversity in the Amazonian Forest remain poorly understood ( Tejedor, 2013 ; Aristide et al, 2015 ; Bond et al, 2015 ; Jameson Kiesling et al, 2015 ; Lynch-Alfaro et al, 2015 ), but some hypotheses have been proposed (e.g., the riverine hypothesis; Peres, Patton & Da Silva, 1996 ; Boubli et al, 2015 ; Lecompte et al, 2017 ). Recently, Jameson Kiesling et al (2015) proposed that the origin and initial diversification of the most recent common ancestor of platyrrine primates occurred in the Amazon, giving rise to existing species by local diversification in the last 15 Myr, suggesting that many genus- and species-level divergences within each of the Aotidae, Atelidae, Callitrichidae, Cebidae, and Pithecidae families occurred first in the Amazon and subsequently spread to the Atlantic Rainforest, Cerrado, Caatinga and Central Grasslands, coinciding with the development and expansion of the Amazonian Rainforest ( Pulliam & Danielson, 1991 ; Lynch Alfaro et al, 2012 ; Buckner et al, 2015 ; Morales-Jimenez, Disotell & Fiore, 2015 ).…”

Factors influencing infant sex ratio in howler monkeys (Alouatta spp.): A literature review and analysis

“…Under this scenario, local resource competition and cooperation should have a minor influence on sex allocation. In well‐studied populations, however, related individuals often live in the same groups and kinship relationships affect social relationships (e.g., Cristóbal Azkarate et al, ; Dias et al, ; Lecompte, Bouanani, de Thoisy, & Crouau‐Roy, ; Nidiffer & Cortés‐Ortiz, ; Pope, , ; Rudran & Fernández‐Duque, ; Van Belle, Estrada, & Di Fiore, ; Van Belle, Estrada, Strier, & Di Fiore, ). For instance, in both black and ursine howler monkeys, females actively recruit females from their own matrilines and force the daughters of other females to emigrate (Crockett, ; Horwich, Brockett, James, & Jones, ; Rumiz, ).…”