High genetic diversity and weak population structuring in the Eurasian Woodcock in Hungary during spring.

In this study, we examined the variation of eight autosomal microsatellite markers, and explored the genetic diversity and the measure of population structuring of Eurasian Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola) in Hungary in spring. We tested whether any subpopulations can be identified in our sample, and we also examined whether the individuals that occurred closer to each other in space and in timewere alsomore similar in genetic terms. We analysed samples from 240 free-ranging birds collected during legal hunting from mid-February to the end of April in 2015 from different parts of the country. The Bayesian clustering method andMarkov ChainMonte Carlo simulation were used to infer the most probable number of genetic clusters without a priori definition of populations. The second approach was a discriminant analysis of principal components in order to identify clusters of individuals without population geneticmodels.Additionally,we fitted a general linear model with the genetic distance between samples as the dependent variable, the temporal (days) and the geographical (meters) distances and the interactions of these factors as independent variables.We found high genetic diversity and lowlevel of population structuring in our samples.Moreover, our results did not support the assumptions thatWoodcocks occurring in different places or at different times in Hungary would also belong to different breeding populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]