IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0049736.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lack of Genetic Structure and Female-Specific Effect of Dispersal Barriers in a Rabies Vector, the Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)

Author

Listed:
  • Benoit Talbot
  • Dany Garant
  • Sébastien Rioux Paquette
  • Julien Mainguy
  • Fanie Pelletier

Abstract

Evaluating the permeability of potential barriers to movement, dispersal and gene exchanges can help describe spreading patterns of wildlife diseases. Here, we used landscape genetics methods to assess the genetic structure of the striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis), which is a frequent vector of rabies, a lethal zoonosis of great concern for public health. Our main objective was to identify landscape elements shaping the genetic structure of this species in Southern Québec, Canada, in an area where the raccoon rabies variant has been detected. We hypothesised that geographic distance and landscape barriers, such as highways and major rivers, would modulate genetic structure. We genotyped a total of 289 individuals sampled across a large area (22,000 km2) at nice microsatellite loci. Genetic structure analyses identified a single genetic cluster in the study area. Major rivers and highways, however, influenced the genetic relatedness among sampled individuals. Sex-specific analyses revealed that rivers significantly limited dispersal only for females while highways only had marginal effects. Rivers and highways did not significantly affect male dispersal. These results support the contention that female skunks are more philopatric than males. Overall, our results suggest that the effects of major rivers and highways on dispersal are sex-specific and rather weak and are thus unlikely to prevent the spread of rabies within and among striped skunk populations.

Suggested Citation

  • Benoit Talbot & Dany Garant & Sébastien Rioux Paquette & Julien Mainguy & Fanie Pelletier, 2012. "Lack of Genetic Structure and Female-Specific Effect of Dispersal Barriers in a Rabies Vector, the Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-7, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0049736
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049736
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049736
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049736&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0049736?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goslee, Sarah C. & Urban, Dean L., 2007. "The ecodist Package for Dissimilarity-based Analysis of Ecological Data," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 22(i07).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anna C. Peterson & Himanshu Sharma & Arvind Kumar & Bruno M. Ghersi & Scott J. Emrich & Kurt J. Vandegrift & Amit Kapoor & Michael J. Blum, 2021. "Rodent Virus Diversity and Differentiation across Post-Katrina New Orleans," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-18, July.
    2. Davide Rassati & Massimo Faccoli & Robert A Haack & Robert J Rabaglia & Edoardo Petrucco Toffolo & Andrea Battisti & Lorenzo Marini, 2016. "Bark and Ambrosia Beetles Show Different Invasion Patterns in the USA," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(7), pages 1-17, July.
    3. R. Bhalla & Neil Pelkey & K. Devi Prasad, 2011. "Application of GIS for Evaluation and Design of Watershed Guidelines," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 25(1), pages 113-140, January.
    4. repec:jss:jstsof:22:i01 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Charles Cunningham & Jorge E Parra & Lucy Coals & Marcela Beltrán & Sama Zefania & Tamás Székely, 2018. "Social interactions predict genetic diversification: an experimental manipulation in shorebirds," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 29(3), pages 609-618.
    6. Samantha Bothwell & Alex Kaizer & Ryan Peterson & Danielle Ostendorf & Victoria Catenacci & Julia Wrobel, 2023. "Pattern‐based clustering of daily weigh‐in trajectories using dynamic time warping," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 2719-2731, September.
    7. Wilson Lara & Stella Bogino & Felipe Bravo, 2018. "Multilevel analysis of dendroclimatic series with the R-package BIOdry," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-23, May.
    8. Kraker, Peter & Schlögl, Christian & Jack, Kris & Lindstaedt, Stefanie, 2015. "Visualization of co-readership patterns from an online reference management system," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 169-182.
    9. Kneib, Thomas & Petzoldt, Thomas, 2007. "Introduction to the Special Volume on "Ecology and Ecological Modeling in R"," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 22(i01).
    10. Ekaterina Dolbunova & Alexandre Lucquin & T. Rowan McLaughlin & Manon Bondetti & Blandine Courel & Ester Oras & Henny Piezonka & Harry K. Robson & Helen Talbot & Kamil Adamczak & Konstantin Andreev & , 2023. "The transmission of pottery technology among prehistoric European hunter-gatherers," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(2), pages 171-183, February.
    11. Turner, Rachel A. & Polunin, Nicholas V.C. & Stead, Selina M., 2015. "Mapping inshore fisheries: Comparing observed and perceived distributions of pot fishing activity in Northumberland," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 173-181.
    12. Michael F Bonner & Russell A Epstein, 2018. "Computational mechanisms underlying cortical responses to the affordance properties of visual scenes," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-31, April.
    13. Pebesma, Edzer & Bivand, Roger & Ribeiro, Paulo Justiniano, 2015. "Software for Spatial Statistics," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 63(i01).
    14. Zhiyuan Wei & Quanchao Zeng & Wenfeng Tan, 2021. "Cover Cropping Impacts Soil Microbial Communities and Functions in Mango Orchards," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-12, April.
    15. Annika Busse & Pablo A P Antiqueira & Alexandre S Neutzling & Anna M Wolf & Gustavo Q Romero & Jana S Petermann, 2018. "Different in the dark: The effect of habitat characteristics on community composition and beta diversity in bromeliad microfauna," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-20, February.
    16. Emily, Mathieu & Hitte, Christophe & Mom, Alain, 2016. "SMILE: A novel dissimilarity-based procedure for detecting sparse-specific profiles in sparse contingency tables," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 171-188.
    17. Eric Vander Wal & Audrey Gagné-Delorme & Marco Festa-Bianchet & Fanie Pelletier, 2016. "Dyadic associations and individual sociality in bighorn ewes," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 27(2), pages 560-566.
    18. Lucas P. Martins & Daniel B. Stouffer & Pedro G. Blendinger & Katrin Böhning-Gaese & Galo Buitrón-Jurado & Marta Correia & José Miguel Costa & D. Matthias Dehling & Camila I. Donatti & Carine Emer & M, 2022. "Global and regional ecological boundaries explain abrupt spatial discontinuities in avian frugivory interactions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    19. repec:jss:jstsof:31:i03 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0049736. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.