POPULATION STRUCTURE
• All birds sampled within the Powder River Basin (PRB) formed a single population
(Bighorn County, Montana and Sheridan, Campbell, & Johnson Counties,
Wyoming). **SIDE NOTE - only part of the PRB was sampled***
• The population is broken down into 2 subpopulations: (1) Sheridan (birds that winter near Sheridan, Wyoming –> 5 sampled leks), and (2) Tongue-Powder Divide (TPD; the rest of the northern PRB -> 16 sampled leks)
• Leks
contain the majority of the population’s genetic diversity (= any given large
lek has most of the genetic diversity found in the population along with unique
alleles). Therefore the LEK is population level that should be managed.
• PRB as a whole exhibits isolation by distance (leks that are geographically close are also genetically close and this pattern breaks down with increasing distance)
• More to come - analyses in progress