Reference genome resources associated with the project: Functional genetic diversity is correlated with intensity of genetic drift in populations of an endangered rattlesnake

Theory predicts that genetic erosion in small, isolated populations of endangered species can be assessed using estimates of neutral genetic variation reflecting long-term impacts of genetic drift, yet this widely used approach has been questioned in the genomics era. Here we leverage a chromosome-level assembly and whole genome resequencing data (N=110 individuals) from an endangered rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus) to evaluate the relationship between genome-wide neutral and functional diversity over long- and short-term timescales. As predicted for populations at long-term equilibrium, we found a positive correlation between population-level estimates of neutral genetic diversity (π) and the mean number of highly detrimental loss-of-function mutations, and a negative relationship between neutral genetic diversity and an estimate of genetic load. In contrast, we found only a weak, non-significant positive correlation between levels of neutral and adaptive variation. Additional analys...