Landscape Genomics of European Green Toad in Sweden

Sammanfattning

Amphibians are the most endangered vertebrate taxon within the sixth mass extinction era. Their importance to ecosystems, as well as sensitivity to environmental changes, raises questions around their future survival and evolutionary potential. The European green toad (Bufotes viridis) is the most threatened amphibian species in Sweden. With declining population size, translocations have been performed to support existing populations and create new populations. As sequencing costs have decreased over the years, genomic technologies can offer new insight that should be considered before performing such introductions. Thus, I incorporated population genomic and environmental data to guide further conservation strategies. Data analysis was mainly performed using the pipeline “A Landscape Genomics Toolkit in R” (ALGATR). My results revealed evidence of population structure shaped by gene flow and genetic drift, coupled with strong local adaptation to different environmental variables (i.e., temperature, precipitation, and seasonality). To date, introductions have been performed using individuals from Limhamn, which according to my findings, have been strongly influenced by temperature. Therefore, I suggest that population mixing trials be conducted with populations that are adapted to the same environmental conditions to avoid possible maladaptation and outbreeding depression.