Genetic Diversity In The South Gippsland Population Research Study

Bittles is an Adjunct Professor and Research Leader at Murdoch University in Australia and is the author of the book “Consanguinity in Context”. M.L Black is employed at the Centre for Human Genetics at Edith Cowan University in Australia. This online journal provides statistics on marriage among couples whom share ancestors.

Loss of genetic diversity in natural populations has often been attributed to a severe reduction in population size. Testing of nine loci in three heavily fished areas concluded that all loci that were strongly polymorphic in the 1982 study showed a reduction in heterozygosity with the exception of one

Arnold, P. (2009, December 4). Endangered Species Tasmanian Devil: Low Genetic Diversity as a Factor of the Tasmanian Devil as an Endangered Species. Retrieved March 8, 2015, from http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/13897.aspx

Through the reduced numbers of genes passed down to devil, gene flow within Tasmanian devil populations are decreasing. This study suggests that DFTD is the major cause for the loss of genetic diversity within Tasmanian Devils.

The indigenous Australians have occupied in Australia for about 50,000 years and become the oldest traditional groups in the world. These indigenous people are distinguished as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. According to Australian Indigenous (2015), the population of indigenous people was more than 600,000 in 2011 or approximately three percent of the total Australian population. Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, the highest population occurred in New South Wales and Queensland had the second largest population, which was estimated at more than quarter of the total indigenous population in 2014 (see Table 1).

Present- Torres Strait Islanders accounted for 6.4% of the Indigenous population and 0.1% of the total Australian population

I am here concerning the endangerment of the Koalas, an animal only found in four of the 8,222 islands and is only found in the country of Australia. It is losing its habitat rapidly due to human population rising and the increase of forest fires caused by the increase in global weather caused by coal plants. I suggest a program to help that would not only preserve the wildlife and forests of the Australian and Oceania but restore it to its proper glory and state. The government is also a key part in this as the country's overall habitat protection is monitored by the government and a federal organization would be helpful in restoring and maintaining the ecosystem. This could lead to this group being a federally funded program and would help bring the koalas and other species of the

There is no overarching solution to the koala population issue as “successful recovery is likely to require very different recovery strategies in different places.” (Rhodes, 2014) An approach adopted in New South Wales by the Environmental Decisions Group is to map koala distributions and the threats faced in this region and from this information develop sound strategies to overcome the threats. (Recovery plan for the koala, 2008)

Koalas are one the most familiar or popular mammals that live in Australia. Its closest and less popular relatives are Tree kangaroos and Hare wallabies. The koalas scientific name is Phascolarctos Cinereus. Koalas live in Eucalyptus Forest in Eastern Australia, it’s bit of a mixture of hare wallabies and tree kangaroos habitats.

To infer genetic cluster number (K) in our sample set, we used two Bayesian approaches based on the clustering method which differed in that they: a) incorporate or not a null allele model, and b) use a non-spatial or spatial algorithm. We selected this approach because Bayesian models capture genetic population structure by describing the genetic variation in each population using a separate joint posterior probability distribution over loci. First, we used STRUCTURE v.2.3.3 (Falush et al., 2003; Pritchard et al., 2000), which does not incorporate a null allele model, but uses a non-spatial model based on a clustering method and it is able to quantify the individual genome proportion from each inferred population. A previous run had been carried out to define what ancestry models (i.e. no admixture model and admixture model) and allele frequency models (i.e. correlated and uncorrelated allele frequency models) fit our dataset. All these previous runs were conducted with locality information prior to improving the detection of structure when this could be weak (Hubisz et al., 2009). Run parameters of previous simulations included five runs with 50,000 iterations following a burn-in period of 5,000 iterations for K = 1–10 as number of tested clusters. Before choosing models to run our dataset we evaluated Evanno’s index ΔK (Evanno et al., 2005), to identify whether different models yielded different K values, implemented in STRUCTURE HARVESTER

Population genetic theory (Wright 1969) suggests that small isolated populations will undergo genetic drift, inbreeding and reduced gene flow, resulting in loss of intra-population genetic variation, increased genetic differentiation among populations, inbreeding depression and loss of fitness (Barrett and Kohn 1991), leading to extirpation (Reed and Frankham 2003). This is also corroborated from ecological theory that predicted that small populations with small geographical range and poor dispersal capacity have higher extinction risk (Belovsky et al. 1999). Consequently, population size is one of the most important criteria in IUCN criteria for red listing of threatened species (Mace et al. 2008).

Microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are short, tandemly repeated DNA regions that are ubiquitously present in the genomes of pro- and eukaryotes. Because of their abundance, multiallelic behavior, high polymorphism, codominant inheritance and excellent reproducibility, PCR-amplified SSRs have become the markers of choice for many applications, including genetic mapping and population genetics (Powell et al. 1996). Among the few disadvantages of SSR markers are the often tedious and costly cloning and enrichment procedures required for their generation (Zane et al. 2002; Squirrell et al. 2003; Weising et al. 2005).

Population pyramids are a tool utilised to understand the make-up of a given population (ABS, 2013). Three different populations were graphed into a population pyramid using data sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics following the 2011 Australian Census. The populations include; the population of Ingham QLD, the population of Australia, and the population of Indigenous people in Ingham. This information assists health professionals to direct health promotion efforts to priority population groups within their communities.

Due to the significant negative impact of the industrial activities on the habitat, many species have become endangered. To conserve the species, a thorough investigation is needed. In this case, the research is based on the study the interdependencies between the genotype and spatial dispersal of populations.

Advanced genetic tools using mtDNA, microsatellite markers, protein and some other implements related to genetics, results to significant information of which scientists interpret to conserve species facing current threats.