Brock Wooldridge, Chloé Orland, Erik Enbody, Merly Escalona, Cade Mirchandani, Russell Corbett-Detig, Joshua D Kapp, Nathaniel Fletcher, Karah Cox-Ammann, Peter Raimondi, Beth Shapiro
The black abalone, Haliotis cracherodii, is a large, long-lived marine mollusc that inhabits rocky intertidal habitats along the coast of California and Mexico. In 1985, populations were impacted by a bacterial disease known as withering syndrome (WS) that wiped out >90% of individuals, leading to the closure of all U.S. black abalone fisheries since 1993. Current conservation strategies include restoring diminished populations by translocating healthy individuals. However, population collapse on this scale may have dramatically lowered genetic diversity and strengthened geographic differentiation, making translocation-based recovery contentious...
April 29, 2024: Molecular Ecology