Genetic Pattern and Diversity of Barbatia virescens: A RAD-Seq Analysis of Five Geographically Distributed...

Barbatia virescens is an important economic bivalve along the Chinese coast, but its natural resources have been severely impacted by habitat degradation and overfishing. In this study, we applied RAD-seq to five wild populations and generated 79.48 Gb of raw data, from which 237,101 high-quality SNPs were identified. All populations exhibited relatively high genetic diversity (mean: H_o = 0.158, H_e = 0.248, π = 0.263, and F_IS = 0.290) with low genetic differentiation (F_ST < 0.05). Results from PCA, structure analysis and Neighbor-Joining (NJ) tree supported weak population structure. Relative migration analyses suggested generally high connectivity among populations, although the XP population exhibited comparatively reduced connectivity under stricter network thresholds. The findings provide a basis for sustainable management and the preservation of genetic resources in B. virescens.