Demographic and genetic estimates of effective population and breeding size in the amphibian Rana temporaria

Abstract

Genetic methods for estimating effective population size (Ne) or the effective number of breeders (Nb) have become popular, but comparisons of these estimates with demographic estimates of Ne and Nb are rare, especially in anurans. We used three genetic (linkage disequilibrium, temporal moments, Bayesian coalescent-based method) and three demographic models, the latter considering number of breeding individuals, sex ratio, reproductive skew, and other demographic data, to estimate Ne and Nb in two subarctic populations (T and P) of the common frog Rana temporaria, subject to long-term capture-recapture studies. Demographic estimates of Ne based on total population size (Ne[T] = 44.5-56.9; Ne[P] = 68.8-93.7) deviated markedly from the genetic estimates obtained using the linkage disequilibrium method (Ne[T] = 97.1; Ne[P] = 13.2). The demographic estimates of Nb, taking into consideration sex ratio and variance in reproductive success (N b[T] = 10.1-39.7; Nb[P] = 3.9-21.3), were higher than the genetic estimates (Nb[T] = 3.7-5.4; Nb[P] = 3.5-3.9). The main factors affecting the effective size estimates were sex ratio and reproductive skew. The discrepancies between corresponding Ne and Nb estimates highlight the sensitivity of both demographic and genetic estimates on their underlying assumptions. Yet the ratios of effective or breeding effective size to the census population size were similar to those reported earlier for anurans, reinforcing the view that the discrepancy between actual and effective breeding sizes in anuran populations is typically very large. © 2007 Society for Conservation Biology.