Spotted Owl Neutrality Tests

The median of Tajima’s D, Fu’s F and Fu and Li’s D* neutrality tests under assumption of constant population size from 10,000 coalescent simulations for mtDNA (control region), nDNA (RAG1) and combined analysis of mtDNA and nDNA (combined). Statistically significant results are shown in bold. A negative value for Tajma’s D and Fu’s F indicates a population expansion. For the California spotted owl the mtDNA and combined gene analyses showed significant evidence of a population expansion for all tests; however, the nDNA was only signficiant for an expansion for the Fu's F test. For the northern spotted owl the mtDNA and combined gene analyses showed significant evidence of a population expansion for all tests; however, the nDNA was not significant. For Mexican spotted owl the mtDNA was siginificant for a population expansion for all test except Tajima's D. The mtDNA gene sequences for Mexican spotted owl were accessed from GenBank and published in Barrowclough et al, 2006. The nDNA tests most likely did not reflect any population expansions or declines because of the slow mutation rate for RAG1.