Critically Small Contemporaneous Effective Population Sizes for Stocks of the African Bonytongue in West Africa Institutional Repository Document uri icon

abstract

  • Inland capture fisheries play a critical role in supporting food security and livelihoods in West Africa. Therefore, it is important to evaluate genetic health of exploited fish populations. The African bonytongue, Heterotis niloticus, supports important commercial and subsistence fisheries in West Africa. Sharp declines of stocks have been reported, however. Herein, we estimate contemporary effective population sizes (Ne) of four Heterotis populations in Nigeria, three in Benin, and five in Cameroon using the Linkage Disequilibrium method with correction for age structure. Ne estimates were used to assess genetic short-term (i.e., inbreeding depression) and long-term (i.e., loss of evolutionary potential) risks. Analyses failed to obtain Ne point estimates for two populations. For the remaining ten populations, corrected Ne point estimates fell well below 500, the minimum recommended for populations to retain evolutionary potential; with eight populations below 100 (range 2.883.5), the minimum recommended to avoid inbreeding depression, one borderline (100125), and one above this threshold (312392). The lower 95% confidence interval bound of Ne for eleven populations was very small (0.714.6), and for the remaining population it was 44.2. Accordingly, all populations examined can be considered potentially at risk of inbreeding depression.

author list (cited authors)

  • Hurtado, L. A., Mateos, M., Caballero, I. C., Oladimeji, T. E., Adite, A., Awodiran, M. O., & Winemiller, K. O.

complete list of authors

  • Hurtado, Luis A||Mateos, Mariana||Caballero, Isabel C||Oladimeji, Tofunmi E||Adite, Alphonse||Awodiran, Michael O||Winemiller, Kirk O

Book Title

  • Preprints.org

publication date

  • November 2023