Conservation Genetics of Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens): Nuclear Phylogeography Drives Contemporary Patterns of Genetic Structure and Diversity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sustainable management of exploited and endangered species is facilitated by knowledge of their geographic genetic structure. Lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) epitomizes both categories, but genetic information has largely been limited to the Laurentian Great Lakes basin. We assessed the hierarchical geographic genetic structure of lake sturgeon across their Canadian range using a variation at 14 microsatellite loci. Observed patterns showed evidence of two ancestral groups which originated from Mississippian and Missourian glacial refugia. Coalescent analysis indicates the two lineages most recently shared common ancestry during the late Pleistocene and were likely isolated by the late Wisconsinan ice advance, with subsequent interpopulation divergences within each lineage reflecting their reciprocal isolation as glacial meltwaters receded. Hierarchical patterns of genetic relationships among contemporary populations largely reflect colonization histories and connections within primary and secondary watersheds. Populations in western Canada showed strong similarities based on their shared Missourian origins and colonization from glacial Lake Agassiz. By contrast, populations in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River drainage were largely founded from a Mississippian source. Sturgeon populations in northern parts of Ontario and Quebec showed evidence of mixed ancestry from secondary contact between the two refugial groups through Holocene meltwater lakes. Within major watersheds, the strong similarity among geographically separate populations reflects their shared ancestry during postglacial colonization. The general lack of structure within major river systems highlights historically continuous habitat (connectivity) and gene flow rather than contemporary barriers (dams). These data highlight the importance of Quaternary and prehistoric events on patterns of genetic diversity and divergence within and among contemporary populations, as well as the importance of these populations for conserving the species’ evolutionary legacy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".