Genetic panmixia of black-faced spoonbills sampled in Taiwan and
Hong Kong
Migratory birds with different wintering grounds might have fidelity to
their own breeding grounds which could lead to genetic differentiation
(Rubenstein et al., 2002). To test whether black-faced spoonbills
wintering in Taiwan and Hong Kong originated from different genetic
groups, we conducted a model-based admixture analysis (Alexander &
Lange, 2011) based on 215,722 unlinked (r 2< 0.2) genome-wide autosomal SNPs (coverage >
10×). The results of the admixture analysis (Fig. 1B) and principal
components analysis (Fig. 1C) suggest that all black-faced spoonbill
individuals sampled in the current study likely consisted of a single
breeding population, allowing us to combine the genomic data from the
individuals from the two wintering sites for the subsequent analyses.
Our results are consistent with satellite tracking records which showed
black-faced spoonbills tagged in both Taiwan and Hong Kong returning to
the Demilitarized Zone of Korea in the breeding season (Ueta et al.,
2002).