Journal article
Low diversity and high levels of population genetic structuring in introduced eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) in the greater Melbourne area, Australia
RM Ayres, VJ Pettigrove, AA Hoffmann
Biological Invasions | Published : 2010
Abstract
Eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) were introduced into Australia in 1925 and released to control mosquitoes. Gambusia holbrooki rapidly became invasive in recipient environments and now threaten native fauna. In this study, we used five polymorphic microsatellite loci and sequence from two mitochondrial genes, cytochrome b and cytochrome oxidase I, to evaluate genetic variation, colonisation and movement patterns of introduced G. holbrooki in the greater Melbourne area, and to assist in identifying the feasibility of local eradication. Microsatellite variation was consistently low within populations and there was evidence of bottleneck events for several populations. Populations disp..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Steve Marshall, Trish Grant, and John McGuckin for providing some sample collections. We also thank Kathryn Guthridge, Paul Mitrovski and Andrew Weeks for guidance on project methods, Melissa Carew for comments on the draft manuscript and David Sharley for assistance generating Fig. 1. STRUCTURE analysis was carried out using the resources of the Computational Biology Service Unit from Cornell University which is partially funded by Microsoft Corporation. Two anonymous reviewers contributed considerably to the improvement of the manuscript. This work was funded by the Melbourne Water Corporation.