Genetic Diversity of New World Crocodilians

Abstract

Genetic diversity is one of the most important attributes of any population; it is defined as the variation in the amount of genetic information within and among individuals of a population, species, assemblage, or community. It can be expressed as differences between individuals at different levels, such as morphological features, structure and chromosomal number, and polymorphisms of sequences of DNA or proteins. An assessment of genetic diversity is fundamental to population genetic studies and has extremely important applications in conservation biology and the development of management and sustainable use plans. This chapter discusses the main indices that allow analyzing genetic variability and population structure of New World crocodilian populations, the methodologies used to estimate these indices, and the principal population genetic data available for these species. The effective population size concept is also discussed, a fundamental parameter in the study of principally those crocodile populations that have been drastically reduced in size and/or suffered fragmentation of their environments.