DOI: 10.5061/dryad.mgqnk98wj
title: Microsatellite Dataset for: Weaving et al. Conservation genetics of regionally extinct peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) and unassisted recovery without genetic bottleneck in southern England

description: The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) has been affected by persecution,
 pollution, trade, and habitat degradation, but it is considered a flagship
 conservation success story because of successful reintroductions and
 population recoveries across broad ranges. However, in the UK there were
 never formal reintroduction programmes for peregrine falcons, and it
 appears that UK populations—and specifically the Sussex peregrines of the
 English south coast—recently recovered from a population crash unassisted.
 To study this, we obtained samples from contemporary populations in
 southern England, Ireland, continental Europe, domestic-bred peregrine
 falcons, and from England pre-population crash. Using microsatellite and
 mtDNA control region data, the genetic diversity and structure, signatures
 of genetic bottlenecks, and potential origin of the Sussex peregrines was
 investigated. We found low levels of genetic diversity across all
 peregrine falcon groups, low but significant genetic differentiation, and
 a few private alleles, indicating some level of genetic structure among
 European peregrines. Although we could not pinpoint the origin of the
 Sussex peregrines, the data suggests that it is not likely to have
 originated from escaped domestic birds or from adjacent European
 populations. The results obtained here parallel other studies on
 peregrines elsewhere showing low genetic diversity but genetic structure.
 We conclude that not enough time elapsed for genetic erosion to occur due
 to the population bottleneck, and that at least for the Sussex peregrines
 there is no need for genetic conservation by wild-take and subsequent
 captive breeding programmes as long as current protection measures remain
 in place.
description: We used a suite of ten polymorphic microsatellite markers
 developed for peregrine falcons (NVHfp5, NVHfp13, NVHfp31, NVHfp46-1,
 NVHfp54, NVHfp79-4, NVHfp82-2, NVHfp86-2, NVHfp89, NVHfp92-1; Nesje et al.
 2000). Alleles were scored on GeneMapper version 3.7 (Applied
 Biosystems). Approximately 25% of contemporary samples were amplified
 twice at all 10 loci to determine genotyping error (Hoffman and Amos 2005;
 Pompanon et al. 2005), and 37.5% of museum samples were genotyped twice to
 confirm accurate scoring of alleles and to allow identification of
 potential errors due to allelic dropout of larger alleles. Owing to
 degradation and yield associated with historical DNA (Wandeler 2007), two
 microsatellite markers, NVHfp5 and NHVfp92-1, failed to amplify across all
 museum samples. Genotype error (mismatch alleles) was found for
 microsatellite marker NHVfp82-2 across all DNA samples and was
 subsequently removed from analysis. The resulting dataset comprised seven
 microsatellite markers and 149 individuals.
description: The microsatellite dataset is presented in STRUCTURE format (two
 lines per individual) (look for the text file "Weaving et al
 Microsatellite dataset Peregrine falcons STRUCTURE.txt"). Missing
 data shown as -9. There are 149 individuals (peregrine falcons) (first
 column shows the names), arranged into 6 groups (second column). The name
 of the group is shown as part of the name (e.g. UK-post_PF1 = peregrine
 falcon#1 belonging to the group UK-post in the manuscript). There are 7
 microsatellite loci. You can open this file in
 STRUCTURE or convert it to other formats.