Data from: Inferring contemporary and historical genetic connectivity from juveniles

Measuring population connectivity is a critical task in conservation
biology. While genetic markers can provide reliable long-term historical
estimates of population connectivity, scientists are still limited in
their ability to determine contemporary patterns of gene flow, the most
practical time frame for management. Here, we tackled this issue by
developing a new approach that only requires juvenile sampling at a single
time period. To demonstrate the usefulness of our method, we used the
Speartooth shark (Glyphis glyphis), a critically endangered species of
river sharks found only in tropical northern Australia and southern Papua
New Guinea. Contemporary adult and juvenile shark movements, estimated
with the spatial distribution of kin pairs across and within three river
systems, was contrasted with historical long-term connectivity patterns,
estimated from mitogenomes and genome-wide SNP data. We found strong
support for river fidelity in juveniles with the within-cohort
relationship analysis. Male breeding movements were highlighted with the
cross-cohort relationship analysis and female reproductive philopatry to
the river systems was revealed by the mitogenomic analysis. We show that
accounting for juvenile river fidelity and female philopatry is important
in population structure analysis and that targeting sampling in nurseries
and juveniles aggregation should be included in the genomic toolbox of
threatened species management.