The common myna (Acridotheres tristis) is one of the most invasive bird species in the world, yet its colonisation history is only partly understood. We identified the introduction history and population structure, and quantified the genetic diversity of myna populations from the native range in India and the introduced populations in New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, and South Africa, based on thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism markers in 814 individuals. We were able to identify the source population of mynas in several invasive locations: mynas from Fiji and Melbourne, Australia, were likely founded by individuals from a subpopulation in Maharashtra, India, while mynas in Hawaii and South Africa were likely independently founded by individuals from other localities in India. Our findings suggest that New Zealand mynas were founded by individuals from Melbourne, which, in turn, were founded by individuals from Maharashtra. We identified two genetic clusters among New Zealand mynas, divided by New Zealand’s North Island’s axial mountain ranges, confirming previous observations that mountains and thick forests may form barriers to myna dispersal. Our study provides a foundation for other population and invasion genomic studies and provides useful information for the management of this invasive species.

A total of 183 myna tissue samples in ethanol from India, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Hawaii and Fiji between 1975–1989 were received from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). A further 193 euthanized mynas were obtained from myna control programs from contributors in New Zealand between 2017–2020, and muscle tissue was subsampled from each individual. DNA was extracted from the ROM tissue samples using the DNeasy Blood & Tissue Kit (Qiagen) following the manufacturer's protocols. DNA was extracted from the New Zealand tissue samples using the Monarch Genomic DNA Purification Kit (NEB) following the manufacturer's protocols. DNA concentration was measured using a Qubit 2.0 Fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific). DNA was diluted to standardized concentrations of 50–100 ng/μL, and sent to Diversity Arrays Technology Pty Ltd company (DArT P/L) for further processing. Samples from 363 individuals were successfully sequenced, including 13 duplicate samples, using the proprietary Diversity Arrays Technology platform and protocol (DArTseq). We included 13 duplicate samples. DArTseq also includes internal replicates of samples as part of its protocol.

This dataset consists of raw reads generated from this study (363 individuals, 13 replicates, and 64 DArT internal replicates, totaling 440 files). The raw reads generated from this study were processed and co-analysed with the DArTseq data from 451 mynas from Australia from the Ewart et al. (2019) study (mynas sampled in 2014–2015).

Files containing variants called using the BCFtools, STACKS, and DArTsoft14 pipelines can also be found here (See README.md and article supplementary information Appendix S2 for more details).

All scripts used in data processing and analysis are available on GitHub (https://github.com/akamolphat/myna_popgen).