Population Genomics Reveals Panmixia in Pacific Sardine (Sardinops sagax) of the North Pacific Evolutionary Applications

The spatial structure and dynamics of populations are important considerations when defining management units in organisms that are harvested as natural resources. In the Eastern Pacific, Pacific Sardine range from Chile to Alaska, the northernmost state of the United States (U.S.), and once supported an expansive and productive fishery. Along its North American range, it is hypothesized to comprise three subpopulations: a northern and southern subpopulation, which primarily occur off the coast of the U.S. and Baja California, Mexico (M.X.), respectively, and a third in the Gulf of California, M.X. We used low coverage whole genome sequencing to generate genotype likelihoods for millions of SNPs in 317 individuals collected from the Gulf of California, M.X., to Oregon, U.S., to assess population structure in Pacific Sardine. Differentiation across the genome was driven by variation at several putative chromosomal inversions ranging in size from ~21 MB to 0.89 MB, although none of the putative inversions showed any evidence of geographic differentiation. Our results support panmixia across an impressive ~4000 km range.