Meeting Abstract
Corridors that connect wildlife populations promote the movement of organisms among otherwise-isolated populations, and thus may allow for the maintenance of genetic diversity within them. San Antonio, Texas has recently established corridors connecting urban natural areas, providing an excellent opportunity to assess the effectiveness of corridors for population management. Here, we study the population genetics of the Texas Spiny Lizard (Sceloporus olivaceus) to determine if lizards from populations in isolated urban parks are genetically less variable than those in areas connected by corridors and those in natural, rural areas. We collected tissue samples from 164 lizards from 16 localities in and around San Antonio and we used 7 microsatellite loci to analyze geographical and genetic population structure. Analyses to date have indicated that some loci are more variable between localities than others. A Mantel Test indicated that there was no isolation by distance among individuals, but analyses using STRUCTURE software suggested that the sampled lizards may be subdivided into 6 or 9 populations. This population structure may be caused by non-random dispersal among urban habitats, which is possibly associated with the geographical location of the corridors. Our ongoing work will assess the level of genetic diversity within each population.
