Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Wilson, Byron S.

Committee Member

Ervin, Gary N.

Committee Member

Wallace, Lisa

Committee Member

Welch, Mark E.

Date of Degree

5-9-2015

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Biological Sciences

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Abstract

Headstarting is one of the more recent practices being used to maintain endangered populations in the wild. A headstart program was developed for the Jamaican iguana, Cyclura collei, in 1991 after its rediscovery in 1990. This current study tests the hypothesis that this population is experiencing a reduction in effective population size in spite of an increasing census population size due to the small number of nests available in the early years of the headstart program. A total of 875 individuals collected from 1991 to 2011 were genotyped at twelve variable microsatellite loci. Results from this study indicate a slight but significant decline in genetic variation (3% loss), and a modest proportional reduction in effective population size (0.075), since the initiation of the program. However, it is important to note these data also suggests that effective population size of this population is stabilizing.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/18173

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