Parentage and relatedness in captive and natural populations of the Roseate Spoonbill (Aves: Ciconiiformes) based on microsatellite data

✍ Scribed by Carolina Isabel Miño; Gregory Martin Sawyer; Robert Curliss Benjamin; Silvia Nassif Del Lama

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 124 KB
• Volume: 311A
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1932-5223
• DOI: 10.1002/jez.543

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

This study constitutes a first approach to evaluate the use of genetic information and relatedness estimators in the investigation of questions related to mating system and parentage in ex situ and in situ populations of the Roseate Spoonbill. We assessed the parentage assignments in 17 supposed families from US captive populations and investigated the genetic relationships among 67 nestlings sampled within 28 nests in Brazilian natural breeding colonies. Estimations of genetic relatedness values, hypothesis testing methods, simulations and maximum likelihood approaches were performed on data from four microsatellite loci. Parentage was confirmed in 61.5% of the registered parent–offspring relationships at zoo parks. Inconsistencies in assignments were investigated and the likely parents were identified for most of the hatchlings. Matings among relatives, not previously noticed based on behavioral observations, were identified by the use of genetic analyses. In natural populations, 33% of the sampled dyads were confidently classified as full‐sibs. Above 25% of the analyzed dyads were unrelated, indicating that more than one parent‐pair may have been responsible for the progeny. Our results demonstrate that genetic information can augment the precision in parentage assignment in captive Roseate Spoonbill populations, and this approach can contribute to their management and conservation. Results obtained using three different methodologies are concordant and point to the existence of a mating system other than monogamy for this species in the wild. The approaches implemented in this study can be applied to other waterbird species in which capture of adults is difficult. J. Exp. Zool. 311A:453–464, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.