Re-evaluating coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) conservation units in Canada using genomic data

Conservation units (CUs) are important tools for supporting the implementation of standardized management practices for exploited species. Following the adoption of the Wild Salmon Policy in Canada, CUs were defined for Pacific salmon based on characteristics related to ecotype, life history, and genetic variation using microsatellite markers as indirect measures of local adaptation. Genomic datasets have the potential to improve the definition of CUs by reducing variance around estimates of population genetic parameters, thereby increasing the power to detect more subtle patterns of population genetic structure and by providing an opportunity to incorporate adaptive information more directly with the identification of variants putatively under selection. We used one of the largest genomic datasets recently published for a non-model species, comprising 5,662 individual Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) from 149 sampling locations and a total of 24,542 high-quality SNPs obtained using g...