The Roti Island snake-necked turtle (Chelodina mccordi) is an endemic species to Roti Island, East Nusa Tenggara. It is critically endangered and possibly extinct in the wild due to overexploitation of exotic species that started circa 1970s, and it has been no longer seen in its natural habitat on Roti Island since 2005. There is short of information on its population dynamic in the past, and I wonder when most likely, if not exactly, the population underwent significant decline.

To figure out this, I am curious if I can employ the coalescent-based model Bayesian Skyline Plot using mtDNA data, as in Drummond et al. (2005)1 with their Beringian bison mtDNA sequences. But, in this case, I would only infer the decline over tens of years, whilst most applications are used to infer over thousands of years.

1 Article Bayesian Coalescent Inference of Past Population Dynamics fr...