ENHANCING THE RETRDEVABILITY OF POPULATION GENETIC SURVEY DATA? AN ASSESSMENT OF ANIMAL MITOCHONDRIAL DNA STUDIES.

ABSTRACT

Surveys of genetic variation in natural populations represent a valuable and often irreplaceable resource. It may be desirable to reanalyze data as new methods are developed for comparisons with other populations or for comparisons with the same populations at different times. We evaluated existing mechanisms of data preservation in a survey of 627 published surveys of mitochondrial DNA variation in animal and found that over half of the datasets (56%) contained insufficient information for reanalysis. In many cases, publication of complete data would not have added excessively to the length of the publication. Because at present, publications represent the main archive of population genetic data, we offer recommendations for how the essential data from mtDNA surveys can be presented in a form that is complete and concise.