Comparative assessment of range‐wide patterns of genetic diversity and structure with SNPs and microsatellites: A case study with Iberian amphibians

Abstract

Reduced representation genome sequencing has popularized the application of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to address evolutionary and conservation questions in nonmodel organisms. Patterns of genetic structure and diversity based on SNPs often diverge from those obtained with microsatellites to different degrees, but few studies have explicitly compared their performance under similar sampling regimes in a shared analytical framework. We compared range‐wide patterns of genetic structure and diversity in two amphibians endemic to the Iberian Peninsula: Hyla molleri and Pelobates cultripes, based on microsatellite (18 and 14 loci) and SNP (15,412 and 33,140 loci) datasets of comparable sample size and spatial extent. Model‐based clustering analyses with STRUCTURE revealed minor differences in genetic structure between marker types, but inconsistent values of the optimal number of populations (K) inferred. SNPs yielded more repeatable and less admixed ancestries with increasing K compared to microsatellites. Genetic diversity was weakly correlated between marker types, with SNPs providing a better representation of southern refugia and of gradients of genetic diversity congruent with the demographic history of both species. Our results suggest that the larger number of loci in a SNP dataset can provide more reliable inferences of patterns of genetic structure and diversity than a typical microsatellite dataset, at least at the spatial and temporal scales investigated.

Abstract

We compared patterns of genetic structure and diversity between microsatellites and SNPs in two amphibians from the Iberian Peninsula: Hyla molleri and Pelobates cultripes. Larger number of loci from SNP dataset can provide more reliable inferences of patterns of genetic structure and diversity than a typical microsatellite dataset (photo: Pelobates cultripes; credits: Guillermo Velo‐Antón).