| Abstract: | Although the phylogeography of European mammals has been extensively investigatedsince the 1990s, many studies were limited in terms of sampling distribution, thenumber of molecular markers used and the analytical techniques employed, frequentlyleading to incomplete postglacial recolonisation scenarios. The broad-scale geneticstructure of the European badger (Meles meles) is of interest as it mayresult from historic restriction to glacial refugia and/or recent anthropogenicimpact. However, previous studies were based mostly on samples from western Europe,making it difficult to draw robust conclusions about the location of refugia,patterns of postglacial expansion and recent demography. In the present study,continent-wide sampling and analyses with multiple markers provided evidence for twoglacial refugia (Iberia and southeast Europe) that contributed to the geneticvariation observed in badgers in Europe today. Approximate Bayesian computationprovided support for a colonisation of Scandinavia from both Iberian and southeasternrefugia. In the whole of Europe, we observed a decline in genetic diversity withincreasing latitude, suggesting that the reduced diversity in the peripheralpopulations resulted from a postglacial expansion processes. Although MSVAR v.1.3also provided evidence for recent genetic bottlenecks in some of these peripheralpopulations, the simulations performed to estimate the method''s power tocorrectly infer the past demography of our empirical populations suggested that thetiming and severity of bottlenecks could not be established with certainty. We urgecaution against trying to relate demographic declines inferred using MSVAR withparticular historic or climatological events. |
