CONSERVATION GENETICS - BEYOND THE MAINTENANCE OF MARKER DIVERSITY

One of the major problems faced by conservation biologists is the allo cation of scarce resources to an overwhelmingly large number of specie s in need of preservation efforts. Both demographic and genetic inform ation have been brought to bear on this problem; however, the role of information obtained from genetic markers has largely been limited to the characterization of gene frequencies and patterns of diversity. Wh ile the genetic consequences of rarity may be a contributing factor to endangerment, it is widely recognized that demographic factors often may be more important. Because patterns of genetic marker variation ar e influenced by the same demographic factors of interest to the conser vation biologist, it is possible to extract useful demographic informa tion from genetic marker data. Such an approach may be productive for determining plant mating systems, inbreeding depression, effective pop ulation size, and metapopulation structure. In many cases, however, da ta consisting only of marker frequencies are inadequate for these purp oses. Development of genealogical based analytical methods coupled wit h studies of DNA sequence variation within and among populations is li kely to yield the most information on demographic processes from genet ic marker data. Indeed, in some cases it may be the only means of obta ining information on the long-term demographic properties that may be most useful for determining the future prospects of a species of inter est.