Ex situ breeding programs as a conservation management tool for the European ground squirrel in the Czech Republic
Description
This dataset contains microsatellite genotypes and associated sampling metadata for the European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus) from eight populations in the Czech Republic, including four ex situ breeding populations and four free-living populations with contrasting management histories. The sampled populations include four ex situ breeding facilities (Zoo Prague, Zoo Brno, Zoo Hluboká nad Vltavou, and Rescue Centre Rozovy u Temelína) and four free-living populations (Hodkovice nad Mohelkou, Radouč, Karlovy Vary, and Písečný vrch). Some free-living populations had previously been reinforced or reintroduced using captive-bred individuals. The dataset includes individual multilocus genotypes and metadata required for population genetic analyses, including population identity, management type, sampling year, and locality information. These data were used to assess genetic diversity, inbreeding, bottleneck signatures, and population structure, including analyses of heterozygosity, allelic richness, pairwise differentiation, Bayesian clustering, principal coordinate analysis, and AMOVA.
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A total of 198 individuals sampled between 2016 and 2019 were genotyped at 12 polymorphic microsatellite loci