Gene flow rates in Yugoslavian populations of the smooth newt Triturus vulgaris

Allozymic variation in 22 loci in several Yugoslavian populations of four subspecies of the smooth newt Triturus vulgaris, has been analyzed. The frequency of private alleles and the coefficient of genetic differentiation, F_ST, give very different indirect estimates of the effective number of migrants per generation, Nm. However, such Nm estimates, in most cases higher than 1, imply that gene flow between populations is large enough as to prevent differentiation by random drift. In the case of T.v. vulgaris, of which sixteen populations amply distributed through Yugoslavia were sampled, there is evidence that frequent extinction and recolonization processes might be responsible for the observed genetic structure. This conclusion has been reached after testing the correlation between genetic, environmental and geographical matrices.