The Genetic Diversity And Molecular Phylogeography Of Daurian Partridge(Perdix Dauuricae) In China

The Daurian Partridge (Perdix dauuricae) is a kind of widespread birds in grassland, belong to Genus Perdix of Phasianidae in Galliformes. They are a kind of hunting birds which have high economic value. We sampled 23 populations which were five populations in Qinghai-tibetan Plateau, nine populations from Loess Plateau, two popualtions in Liupan Mountain, three populations in Inner Mongolia Plateau, two populations in North China Plain, one populations in Northeast Plain and one poulation in Tianshan Mountains.We obtained 285 samples which were successfully and completely amplified by microsatellite marker to investigate the genetic diversity differentation, geographic structure and the molecular phylogeography of the Daurian Partridge.We selected eight microsatellite loci, developed in the domestic chicken and quail, for utility in Daurian Partridge. The main results and conclusion are as below:(1) The genetic diversity for Daurian Partridge. A total of 94 alleles at the 8 loci tested with an average of 11.75 alleles per locus were found in Daurian Partridge populations. The average of observed heterozygosity value (HO) was 0.58 and the average of expected hetergozygosity value (HE) was 0.72. The polymorphism information content (PIC)values ranged from 0.56 (MCW280) to 0.87 (UBC0006). The average value of PIC was 0.73. All loci of the samples were polymorphic. The above data indicated that the genetic diversity of the current Daurian Partridge was relatively high. The Daurian Partridge was a kind of birds which distributes widely in Northern China with wide ecological differentiations. High levels of genetic diversity in natural populations can be associated with a wide range ecological types and niche variation. Habitat fragmentation because of Quaternary glaciations isolation and the forest isolation during interglacial. These factors may lead to a high level of genetic diversity of Daurian Partridge.(2) Population genetic differentiation for Daurian Partridge. Tests for differences in the distribution of allele frequencies indicated highly significant differentiation between all pairs of populations, microsatellite genetic diversity was significantly partitioned among the 23 populations (average multilocus FST= 0.10, RST= 0.11, P＜0.001). The AMOVA analysis revealed that 81.03%(FST=0.20166, P＜0.001) of the total genetic variance resided within populations with a substantial proportion 9.19% (FSC= 0.12278, P＜0.001) and 9.78%(FCT= 0.10979, P＜0.05) of the variance being at the within-group and among-group hierarchical levels, respectively. The obvious genetic differentiation between Daurian Partridge populations, from one side, reflects the Daurian partridge has better adaptability to the environment and has a high evolutionary potential. Mantle test showed that there were no significant positive correlation between FST/(1-FST) and geographical distance. The result told us that the differences between genetic distance were not simply dicided by the geographical distance.(3) Phylogeographical reconstruction. Analysis of the microsatellite DNA markers indicated that Daurian Partridge were geographically structured. Both the UPGMA and Bayesian clustering analysis of multilocus genotypes provided clear indications of genetic divergence of all Daurian Partridge populations into two distinct clusters A and B.The Factorial correspondence analysis (FCA) also got the same result. The populations in Cluster A come from Loess Plateau and Qinghai-tibetan Plateau, populations in Cluster B come from Liupan Mountain, North China Plain, Northeast Plain, Tianshan Mountains and Inner Mongolia Plateau. Based on the estimated divergence time between the two groups was 0.33 million years ago. During this period, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau uplift had achieved its current elevation causing the desertification of the northern regions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau expanded rapidly, affecting the extent and quality of arid grassland and scrub habitats, and creating barriers for population distributions and restricting gene flow between populations located in Cluster A and B. Cluster A was further subdivided into two subgroups:A1 and A2. The A1 group was comprised of populations from Loess Plateau, and A2 group consisted of populations from Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.The divergence time was 0.20 million years which corresponds with the Riss interglacial. A wide range of forest expansion during interglacial restricted the gene flow between populations from Loess Plateau, lead to the divergence of the two group populations. Cluster B was also subdivided into two subgroups:B1 and B2, corresponding to populations of the Liupan Mountains and populations in Inner Mongolia Plateau, Northeast Plain, North China Plain and poulation in Tianshan Mountains. We speculate that the Liupan Mountain populations were split from the other populations because of climatic changes and subsequent geographic barriers created by deserts.The ecological genetics analysis of the relationship between the Daurian Partridge genetic diversity and environmental factors showed that, genetic diversity parameters decreased with the increase of latitude and longitude. The highest genetic diversity of Daurian Partridge populations mainly in the Qaidam Basin of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We speculate that Daurian Partridge may be originated in the Qaidam Basin.The Bottleneck analysis showed that the Daurian Partridge in some 23 populations have undergone a bottleneck effect. Combined the analysis data of genetic diversity and bottleneck, proposed that we should enhance attention and strengthen supervision to populations in Liupan Mountain, the Qaidam Basin populations, WC and XH population in North China, JN population and ZJC population in Loess Plateau, seek to ensure that the size of these populations were sufficient to maintain the genetic diversity.