Data from: Fine-scale genetic structure in a wild bird population: the role of limited dispersal and environmentally-based selection as causal factors

Individuals are typically not randomly distributed in space; consequently
ecological and evolutionary theory depends heavily on understanding the
spatial structure of populations. The central challenge of landscape
genetics is therefore to link spatial heterogeneity of environments to
population genetic structure. Here, we employ multivariate spatial
analyses to identify environmentally induced genetic structures in a
single breeding population of 1174 great tits Parus major genotyped at
4701 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) loci. Despite the small spatial
scale of the study relative to natal dispersal we found multiple axes of
genetic structure. We built distance-based Moran's eigenvector maps
to identify axes of pure spatial variation, which we used for spatial
correction of regressions between SNPs and various external traits known
to be related to fitness components (avian malaria infection risk, local
density of conspecifics, oak tree density and altitude). We found clear
evidence of fine-scale genetic structure, with 21, 7 and 9 significant
SNPs respectively associated with infection risk by two species of avian
malaria (Plasmodium circumflexum and P. relictum) and local conspecific
density. Such fine-scale genetic structure relative to dispersal
capabilities suggests ecological and evolutionary mechanisms maintain
within-population genetic diversity in this population with the potential
to drive micro-evolutionary change.