Sex-biased gene flow among elk in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem

We quantified patterns of population genetic structure to help understand gene flow among elk populations across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We sequenced 596 base pairs of the mitochondrial control region of 380 elk from eight populations. Analysis revealed high mitochondrial DNA variation within populations, averaging 13.0 haplotypes with high mean gene diversity (0.85). The genetic differentiation among populations for mitochondrial DNA was relatively high (F_ST  =  0.161; P  =  0.001) compared to genetic differentiation for nuclear microsatellite data (F_ST  =  0.002; P  =  0.332), which suggested relatively low female gene flow among populations. The estimated ratio of male to female gene flow (m_m/m_f  =  46) was among the highest we have seen reported for large mammals. Genetic distance (for mitochondrial DNA pairwise F_ST) was not significantly correlated with geographic (Euclidean) distance between populations (Mantel's r  =  0.274, P  =  0.168). Large mitochondrial DNA genetic distances (e.g., F_ST > 0.2) between some of the geographically closest populations (