Phylogeographic population structure of great reed warblers: an analysis of mtDNA control region sequences

Abstract

A portion of the mitochondrial control region (494 bp) was sequenced in 106 great reed warblers sampled in six breeding populations in Europe and one wintering population in Africa. In total, 33 different haplotypes were found. There was little evidence of divergence between populations in northern and western Europe whereas the sample from Greece differed significantly from the other European breeding populations. The lowest haplotype diversity was found near the distribution range limit in Sweden and in The Netherlands suggesting recent effects of bottlenecks/founder events in these areas. A neighbour-joining analysis of the different haplotypes placed the haplotypes into two distinctive clades, A and B. The divergence of the two clades was on average 1.29%. Accounting for the within clade variation suggested a divergence time between these lines approximately 70 000 years BP. The frequency of the two clades changed longitudinally across Europe with the A haplotype in the west and the B haplotype in the east. All birds from Kenya carried the B haplotype suggesting an origin of these birds east of Latvia/Greece. The long-term female effective population size was estimated to be 20 000 individuals, which is approximately 2% of current population size.