Published In

Conservation Genetics

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-24-2025

Subjects

Genomes -- research

Abstract

In the face of urbanization and anthropogenic change, some native species persist while others are lost. Understanding native populations, particularly in marginal habitat, can lend insights into the effects of habitat change. The Oregon Slender Salamander (Batrachoseps wrighti) is endemic to the late-successional forests of the Cascade Range in Oregon and has declined due to land use change. In 2007, several populations of the Oregon Slender Salamander were found within highly human-modified localities in the Portland Metropolitan Region. We investigate whether these, and other newly discovered suburban populations, represent remnant populations that persisted in the face of habitat change or if they were recently reintroduced to the area via human-assisted transport. We use ecological niche models to assess climatic suitability of the suburban localities and population genomic analyses to examine the relationship of these suburban populations to populations within forested habitats in the Oregon Cascade Range. We find that the suburban sites are marginally suitable for the Oregon Slender Salamander. Furthermore, these populations are genetically distinct from those in the Cascade Range and show a pattern of isolation-by-distance. Our results support the hypothesis that these populations are remnant populations rather than recent introductions and represent a unique evolutionary history.

Rights

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Locate the Document

https://doi-orgl/10.1007/s10592-025-01710-5

DOI

10.1007/s10592-025-01710-5

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43909

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

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