Macrocystis pyrifera before (2008) and after (2018-19) microsatellite data in Structure format

Given the impacts of climate change and other anthropogenic stressors on marine systems, there is a need to accurately predict how species respond to changing environments and disturbance regimes. The use of genetic tools to monitor temporal trends in populations gives ecologists the ability to estimate changes in genetic diversity and effective population size that may be undetectable by traditional census methods. Although multiple studies have used temporal genetic analysis, they usually involve commercially important species, and rarely sample before and after disturbance. In this study, we run a temporal analysis of giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, genetic diversity over the scope of 10 years (2008-2018) using the same microsatellite marker panel to assess the genetic consequences of disturbance in several populations of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) in the Southern California Bight. The study is a rare pre- and post-disturbance microsatellite analysis that included declines t..., Sampling
To conduct a temporal genetic analysis, we sampled giant kelp at five sites between 2018 and 2019 located in three regions differing in genetic coancestry in the Southern California Bight (SCB), hereafter referred to as 2018 samples. These regions had also been sampled before, in 2007 and 2008, and genotyped by Johansson et al. (2015) using microsatellite marker analysis, hereafter referred to as 2008 samples. Two of our locations are continental, Leo Carrillo, and Camp Pendleton, with one site sampled in each. Our third location was Catalina Island, where we sampled three sites .  We note that the 2018 site from this location is located 12 km south of the 2018 site (San Mateo) from Johannsson et al. (2015), due to logistic constraints that precluded sampling the same site. Genetic differentiation at this scale is weak, Johansson et al. (2015) reported that kelp forests from a large swath of the coast, south of Los Angeles to Baja California, belonged to the same genetic group,..., The data format is that of Structure program (https://web.stanford.edu/group/pritchardlab/structure.html)