Study objectives
Our first objective is to determine if there is significant genetic
differentiation between mountain treeshrews on MT and MK, which would
have implications for conservation monitoring and management of the
species in KNP and beyond. Our second goal is to assess population
genetic structure across the species’ elevational extent on both peaks.
We test the hypothesis that gene flow is restricted across the steep
ecological gradient that mountain treeshrews inhabit. We predict that
mountain treeshrews will exhibit significant differentiation in neutral
genetic markers 1) between mountain peaks, due to limited dispersal
across the lowland habitat that connects them, and 2) across elevations
– with greater differentiation on MK due to its higher elevation and
associated environmental variability. Our final objective is to evaluate
the utility of ultraconserved element (UCE) loci for estimating
population genetic parameters and structure at fine geographic scales
within a species. Previous studies have shown that UCEs are sufficiently
variable to resolve phylogenies on a phylogeographic scale (e.g. Harvey,
Smith, Glenn, Faircloth, & Brumfield, 2016; Mason, Olvera-Vital,
Lovette, & Navarro- Sigüenza, 2018; Smith, Harvey, Faircloth, Glenn, &
Brumfield, 2014) and to answer questions regarding recently diverged
species (Oswald et al., 2016; Winker, Glenn, & Faircloth, 2018).
However, based on a Web of Knowledge literature search (accessed April
12, 2020) using the keywords ‘population’ AND ‘ultraconserved element’,
ours is the first study to use these markers to study population
genetics at a landscape scale. We describe a modified UCE processing
pipeline to generate single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and phased
pseudo-haplotype sequence datasets.