Genetic diversity & structure of the Central American tapir (Tapirus Bairdii) in the northwest of the Talamanca mountain range and the Tenorio-Miravalles biological corridor, Costa Rica

Tapirus bairdii is the largest terrestrial herbivore living in Mesoamerica, distributed from southern Mexico to northwestern Colombia. Tapirs play relevant ecological roles as seed dispersers and nutrient cycling redistributors and modulators, among other ecosystem services provided. However, T. bairdii is endangered throughout its current range. The genetic study of the Central American tapir was declared a priority in the 2005 Tapir Specialist Group action plan, but few investigations exploring the genetics of T. bairdii have been published to date. We used invasive (blood, tissue, pulled out hairs) and non-invasive (feces, fallen hairs) samples and a set of seven microsatellite loci to describe the genetic diversity and structure of three a priori defined populations: Cerro de la Muerte (CM), Herradura-San Jerónimo (H-SJ) and Tenorio-Miravalles (TM) of wild tapirs from two high-biodiversity regions in Costa Rica: the Northwest of Talamanca Mountain Range (NWT) and Tenorio-Miravalles Biological Corridor (TMBC). We confirmed the presence of tapir-specific DNA in the collected samples by sequencing a fragment of 114-148 bp of cytb gene. We found moderate levels of genetic diversity (Ho=0.52) when analyzing the whole Costa Rican metapopulation. Our estimates of diversity by population ranged in the middle of previous reports from other populations of the species (Ho= 0.46-0.58). We found significant genetic structure among NWT and TMBC region (G’ST Nei=0.0587; p<0.001) and among the three populations using FST and G-Statistics. AMOVA analysis found significant genetic structure among NWT and TMBC regions (ϕCT=0.0602; p<0.001) and marginal genetic structure among populations (ϕSC=0.0479; p