The Indirect Effects of Urbanization on New York Populations of Nigronia serricornis (Say) (Megaloptera: Corydalidae). Joanna R. Salvino Faculty Sponsor: Jeffrey S. Heilveil, Ph.D. Biology Department, SUNY College at Oneonta, Oneonta, NY ABSTRACT Fine-scale interactions within a species promote broad-scale population health by allowing for adaptation in changing environments. The geography of a region dictates the movement and interaction of natural populations. Movement of organisms can be impeded by the physical features of the land. Altered landscapes as a result of anthropogenic development may inhibit physical interactions among organisms. Nigronia serricornis (Say), the saw-combed fishfly, (Fig. 1) is an organism that is very sensitive to environmental change. This insect dwells in small streams and is an indicator species of high water quality and oxygen content. This project compared gene flow of N. serricornis populations in urbanized areas with poulations from forested areas in order to examine the effect of urbanization on these aquatic insects. Preliminary data show high genetic diversity in un-urbanized areas, even over these short distances. SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH By answering these questions, we can gain a better understanding of contemporary impacts INTRODUCTION on aquatic organisms in our area. These data Urbanization near a river can be very destructive to the should contribute to the growing literature on ecosystem. This usually results in the extirpation of sensitive anthropogenic impacts on natural populations species, but the indirect effects on surrounding populations © A. Hornburg Heilveil and can inform stakeholder and urban planning are unknown. It is therefore instructive to look at populations Fig. 1: Nigronia serricornis larva (left) and adult (right) decisions. Furthermore, these data can also be of an indicator species, because they are most likely to show used in planning mitigation projects, aiding evidence of these indirect effects. Nigronia serricornis is an conservation projects in flowing water indicator species of high water quality and oxygen content, METHODS ecosystems. found only in healthy and highly-oxygenated streams. Bioassessment data from the NYS DEC was used to find 4 sets Historical population structure has been elucidated, and of three sites, each site roughly 12 Km apart (Fig. 3). Two sets highlighted New York as an excellent place to examine were in urbanized areas (SE of Albany and near Newburgh), and urbanization effects (Heilveil and Berlocher 2006). This study two sets in unimpacted areas (W of Margaretville and near Red examined sets of populations in urbanized and forested Hook). Up to 15 N. serricornis larvae were collected per site for regions (Fig. 2) to determine whether urbanization had left a DNA extraction. The mitochondrial gene COI was amplified signature on the genetic structure of populations in the using the primers of Folmer, et al. (1994). Sequences were surrounding areas. aligned by hand and were compared to sequences recovered by Heilveil and Berlocher (2006) to determine the evolutionary TROY relationships between haplotypes. Larvae were genotyped for ANDES two polymorphic microsatellite loci developed by Stevenson and RED HOOK Heilveil (2013), and were amplified using the thermal cycler protocol of Real et al. (2009). Tests of Hardy-Weinberg NEWBURGH Equilibrium, Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA; used to calculate FST, a measure of genetic isolation), pairwise- calculations of FST, and exact tests of sample differentiation were performed using Arlequin (Excoffier 2005)(ver. 3.5.1.3). These tests were used to compare the amount of genetic isolation Fig. 3: Site plot locations in New York State. Pink dots between impacted and unimpacted sites, and also examine the represent urbanized regions (one on each side of the Hudson River) and white dots represent unimpacted role of the Hudson River as a barrier to gene flow. The amount of regions (one on each side of the Hudson River). Each impervious surface was calculated for each region and served as dot represents three sampling sites. a measurement of urbanization using ArcGIS based on the 2006 National Land Cover Database available from the Multi- LITERATURE CITED Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium. Excoffier, L., Guillaume, L. and S. Schneider. 2005. Arlequin (version 3.0): An integrated software package for population genetics data analysis. Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online 1: 47-50. Folmer, O., Black, M., Hoeh, W., Lutz, R., and Vrijenhoek, R. 1994. DNA primers for amplification of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I from diverse metazoan invertebrates. Molecular Marine Biology and Biotechnology. 3: 294-299. Heilveil JS, Berlocher SH (2006) Phylogeography of postglacial range expansion in Nigronia RESULTS AND DISCUSSION serricornis Say (Megaloptera: Corydalidae). Molecular Ecology. 15, 1627-1641. Real, K. M., D. J. Schmidt, and J. M. Hughes. 2009. Mogurnda adspersa microsatellite markers: multiplexing and multi-tailed primer tagging. Conservation Genetics Resources 1:411-414. Fig. 2: Forested sampling site in Andes, NY (left) and urbanized site in Stevenson, R. M. 2013. Facilitating Ecological Research: Development of microsatellite markers for Across all loci, FST was greater in the Troy metapopulation the megalopteran Nigronia serricornis (Say). M. Sc. Thesis. State University of New York, Troy, NY (right). College at Oneonta. (FST=0.08) than in the other three (FST=0.015 in Andes, FST=0.043 in Red Hook, and F =0.016 in Newburgh). This indicates that Troy ST ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS has the greatest barrier to gene flow out of the four regions. The We would like to thank the NYDEC bioassessment unit for percent of impervious surface in each region followed the same site information, J Olson for assistance with GIS data, and trend. Troy had the highest % impervious surface, at 14%, as EE Castle, CL Picucci, MJ Dami, JS Salvino, LA Salvino, compared to ≤ 4% in the other regions. EH Salvino, and PD Buchanan for assistance in the field. This research is funded by grants from the SUNY College Senate Committee on Research..