Genetic structure of the Painted Bunting and its implications for conservation of migratory populations

The Painted Bunting Passerina ciris is a Neotropical songbird which breeds primarily in the United States during the summer and migrates to Mexico, Central America, southern Florida, and the Caribbean over the winter. Male Painted Buntings are brightly coloured, which makes them highly sought after as pets, particularly in Mexico, Central America and Europe. We used short sequence repeats (microsatellite DNA) to investigate the population genetic structure of the Painted Bunting and its implications in conservation management of migratory populations. We found a detectable level of population differentiation as revealed by pairwise FST and RST comparisons and Bayesian clustering analyses, with strong support for differentiation between eastern and western Painted Buntings (e.g. Oklahoma and Georgia FST = 0.1; P = 0.005; RST = 0.18; P = 0.04) in accordance with previous mitochondrial DNA analysis. We recovered additional support for two sub‐groups within the western clade. While linking ...