Abstract
The specialized fauna of peat bogs declines strongly both in species numbers and population density and becomes fragmented because of anthropogenic land use changes. We investigated 15 populations of the stenotopic ground beetle species Agonum ericeti in south Sweden to address the question of reduced genetic variability in populations inhabiting smaller habitat patches. Our results reveal a generally low differentiation and a significant positive relationship between habitat size and allelic richness.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the authorities of the Store Mosse National Park (Sweden) for the permit. The Leuphana students from the Sweden excursions 2005 and 2006 helped with collecting the beetles. We are grateful to A. Peters for her technical support and to P. Dieker (Trier), T. Huk (Braunschweig), and two anonymous reviewers for critical reading. CD is a VATAT funded post-doctoral fellow at the Tel Aviv University Zoological Museum.
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Drees, C., Zumstein, P., Buck-Dobrick, T. et al. Genetic erosion in habitat specialist shows need to protect large peat bogs. Conserv Genet 12, 1651–1656 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-011-0254-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-011-0254-5