Quantifying the similarity between genes and geography across Alaska's alpine small mammals

Aim: Quantitatively evaluate the similarity of genomic variation and geography in five different alpine small mammals in Alaska, and use this quantitative assessment of concordance as a framework for refining hypotheses about the processes structuring population genetic variation in either a species-specific or shared manner. Location: Alaska and adjacent north-western Canada. Methods: For each taxon we generated 3500–7500 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and applied a Procrustes analysis to find an optimal transformation that maximizes the similarity between principal components analysis maps of genetic variation and geographical maps of sample locations. We generate stability maps using projected distributions from ecological niche models of the Last Glacial Maximum and the present. Results: Significant similarity between genes and geography exists across taxa. However, the extent to which geography is predictive of patterns of genetic variation not only differs among taxa, but the cor...