Population viability and metapopulation dynamics are strongly affected by gene flow. Identifying ecological correlates of genetic structure and gene flow in wild populations is therefore a major issue both in evolutionary ecology and species management. Studying the genetic structure of populations also enables identification of the spatial scale at which most gene flow occurs, hence the scale of the functional connectivity, which is of paramount importance for species ecology. In this study, we examined the genetic structure of a social, continuously distributed mammal, the European badger (Meles meles), both at large spatial scales (among populations) and fine (within populations) spatial scales. The study was carried out in 11 sites across France utilizing a noninvasive hair trapping protocol at 206 monitored setts. We identified 264 badgers genotyped at 24 microsatellite DNA loci. At the large scale, we observed high and significant genetic differentiation among populations (global Fst = 0.139; range of pairwise Fst [0.046–0.231]) that was not related to the geographic distance among sites, suggesting few large-scale dispersal events. Within populations, we detected a threshold value below which badgers were genetically close (< 400 m), highlighting that sociality is the major structuring process within badger populations at the fine scale.

中文翻译：

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多个空间尺度的种群遗传结构：欧洲獾中社会群体的重要性

种群活力和种群动态受基因流动的强烈影响。因此，识别野生种群中遗传结构和基因流的生态相关性是进化生态学和物种管理中的一个主要问题。研究种群的遗传结构还可以确定大多数基因流动发生的空间尺度，因此功能连接的尺度对物种生态学至关重要。在这项研究中，我们在大空间尺度（种群间）和精细（种群内）空间尺度上检查了一种社会性、连续分布的哺乳动物欧洲獾（Meles meles）的遗传结构。该研究在法国的 11 个地点使用无创毛发捕获协议在 206 个受监控的环境中进行。我们在 24 个微卫星 DNA 位点鉴定了 264 只獾。在大规模上，我们观察到种群之间的高且显着的遗传分化（全局 Fst = 0.139；成对 Fst 的范围 [0.046-0.231]），这与站点之间的地理距离无关，表明很少有大规模的扩散事件。在种群内，我们检测到一个阈值，低于该阈值獾在遗传上接近（< 400 m），这突出表明社会性是獾种群在精细尺度上的主要结构过程。