DOI: 10.5061/dryad.bj57t
title: Data from: Fragmentation of Atlantic Forest has not affected gene flow of a widespread seed-dispersing bat

description: Habitat loss and resultant fragmentation are major threats to
 biodiversity, particularly in tropical and subtropical ecosystems. It is
 increasingly urgent to understand fragmentation effects, which are often
 complex and vary across taxa, time and space. We determined whether recent
 fragmentation of Atlantic forest is causing population subdivision in a
 widespread and important Neotropical seed-disperser: Artibeus lituratus
 (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae). Genetic structure within highly fragmented
 forest in Paraguay was compared to that in mostly contiguous forest in
 neighboring Misiones, Argentina. Further, observed genetic structure
 across the fragmented landscape was compared with expected levels of
 structure for similar timespans in realistic simulated landscapes under
 different degrees of reduction in gene flow. If fragmentation
 significantly reduced successful dispersal, greater population
 differentiation and stronger isolation-by-distance would be expected in
 the fragmented than in the continuous landscape, and genetic structure in
 the fragmented landscape should be similar to structure for simulated
 landscapes where dispersal had been substantially reduced. Instead, little
 genetic differentiation was observed and no significant correlation was
 found between genetic and geographic distance in fragmented or continuous
 landscapes. Furthermore, comparison of empirical and simulated landscapes
 indicated empirical results were consistent with regular long-distance
 dispersal and high migration rates. Our results suggest maintenance of
 high gene flow for this relatively mobile and generalist species, which
 could be preventing or significantly delaying reduction in population
 connectivity in fragmented habitat. Our conclusions apply to A. lituratus
 in Interior Atlantic Forest, and do not contradict broad evidence that
 habitat fragmentation is contributing to extinction of populations and
 species, and poses a threat to biodiversity worldwide. 
description: Empirical genotypic data
 of Artibeus lituratus from Paraguay and ArgentinaThis file contains
 fragment analysis results from genotyping Artibeus lituratus. Genomic DNA
 was extracted with a QIAGEN DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit, following
 manufacturer’s instructions. Five hundred and twenty-six bats were
 genotyped at 15 microsatellite loci: 3 originally developed for A.
 jamaicensis (Ortega et al. 2002), and 12 developed specifically for A.
 lituratus (McCulloch & Stevens 2011). Thermocycler settings,
 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) conditions, genotyping and scoring
 information are given in Table S2 and the supplementary methods (Appendix
 S1) of the associated publication. Genotyped bats came from 19 sites, 14
 in eastern Paraguay and 5 in Misiones, Argentina. Data table columns
 contain, in order, the following information: individual identifiers
 (original collector number), the site from which bats were collected
 (refer to Appendix for site abbreviations and additional information),
 fragment length for each microsatellite locus at each allele (aka
 "locus1_allele1", "locus2_allele2",
 "locus2_allele1", ...). Missing data are indicated with
 "0".1Alit-Genetic.txt