Browsing by Author "Yamac, Elif"

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    Extremely low mitochondrial DNA diversity in a near threatened species, the Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus in Turkey
    (2019) Cakmak, Emel; Peksen, Cigdem Akin; Kirazli, Cihangir; Yamac, Elif; Bilgin, C.Can; ABC-7273-2020
    The Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus is a near threatened raptor that occurs in isolated populations across its range. The only comprehensive genetic study performed so far excluded samples from Turkey, although this area forms a significant part of the species' range. In this study, we used 311 bp long sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene from 58 Turkish individuals to assess genetic diversity and phylogeny, and to determine if any signals for population expansion exist. Our phylogenetic analyses indicate that the Turkish birds hold, along with those from the Caucasus, an intermediate position between European (Balkan and Iberian) and North Asian (Mongolian) lineages. Our findings also demonstrate extremely low mitochondrial diversity and suggest no population expansion. Despite the low genetic diversity found in this study, other mtDNA gene regions and other nuclear markers should be evaluated together with the current results, before any kind of conservation action plan of this species is applied.
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    Genetic diversity is retained in a bottlenecked Cinereous Vulture population in Turkey
    (2019) Cakmak, Emel; Peksen, Cigdem Akin; Kirazli, Cihangir; Yamac, Elif; Bensch, Staftan; Bilgin, Cemal Can; ABC-7273-2020
    Vulture populations worldwide have suffered precipitous declines in recent decades. The Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus, a highly philopatric scavenger distributed across southern Europe and the central Asian plateau, is threatened in many parts of its range. Turkey holds the second largest population of this species in the Western Palaearctic, but there has been no research on its genetic structure and the possible implications of this structure for the future of the species. Here we report nuclear diversity and relatedness determined by short tandem repeat genotyping of 81 individuals from the four largest colonies. Our results demonstrated no significant genetic structuring, suggesting a single panmictic metapopulation connected by frequent dispersal. Furthermore, we show that the study population has retained moderate levels of genetic diversity, despite passing through a recent demographic bottleneck. We estimated the effective population size to be 112 individuals (95% confidence interval 74-201). Our results imply that the observed lack of increase in population size since the 1990s has not been caused by lowered fitness due to genetic inbreeding but rather by increased mortality via demographic processes. In the short term, we suggest that conservation efforts should treat the Turkish subpopulations as a single management unit and aim to increase population size through effective protection, especially during the breeding season.