Data from: Effect of oceanographic barriers and overfishing on the population genetic structure of the European spiny lobster (Palinurus elephas)

Defining population structure and genetic diversity levels is of the utmost importance for developing efficient conservation strategies. Overfishing has caused mean annual catches of the European spiny lobster (Palinurus elephas) to decrease alarmingly along its distribution area. In this context, there is a need for comprehensive studies to evaluate the genetic health of the exploited populations. The present work is based on a set of 10 nuclear markers amplified in 331 individuals from 10 different localities covering most of P. elephas distribution area. Samples from Atlantic and Mediterranean basins showed small but significant differences, indicating that P. elephas populations do not behave as a single panmictic unit but form two partially-overlapping groups. Despite intense overfishing, our dataset did not recover a recent bottleneck signal, and showed a large and stable historical effective size instead. This result could be accounted for by specific life history traits (reproduction and longevity) and the limitations of molecular markers in covering very recent timescales for non temporal samples. Our study emphasizes the necessity of integrating information on effective population sizes and life history parameters when evaluating population connectivity levels from genetic data.

明确种群结构与遗传多样性水平，对于制定高效的物种保护策略至关重要。过度捕捞已导致其分布区内欧洲棘刺龙虾（Palinurus elephas）的年平均捕捞量出现令人警觉的大幅下降。在此背景下，亟需开展综合性研究以评估该开发种群的遗传健康状况。本研究基于一套10个核标记（nuclear markers），对覆盖欧洲棘刺龙虾大部分分布区域的10个不同采样点的331个个体进行了扩增分析。来自大西洋与地中海海域的样本呈现出细微但显著的遗传差异，表明欧洲棘刺龙虾种群并非单一的随机交配单元（panmictic unit），而是形成了两个部分重叠的类群。尽管面临高强度捕捞压力，本数据集并未检测到近期种群瓶颈信号，反而呈现出历史有效种群大小（effective population size）庞大且稳定的特征。该结果可通过其特定的生活史特征（繁殖与寿命）以及分子标记在非时序样本中难以反映极近期时间尺度的遗传变化这一局限性得到解释。本研究强调，在利用遗传数据评估种群连通性水平时，有必要整合有效种群大小与生活史参数相关信息。