Abstract
Madagascar has 59 described species of Coffea, of which 42 are listed as critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable by the criteria of the Red List Category system of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The littoral forest of Madagascar is a distinctive type of humid evergreen forest restricted to unconsolidated sand located within a few kilometers of the Indian Ocean, now persisting only as small fragments with ca. 10 % of its original range remaining. In an attempt to understand the genetic diversity of Madagascan coffee species, we studied ex situ and in situ populations of Coffea commersoniana, an endemic species of the littoral forests of southeastern Madagascar and soon to be impacted by mining activities in that region. The in situ populations studied showed higher genetic diversity than the ex situ population. The genetic partitioning among the two in situ populations of C. commersoniana was high enough to necessitate keeping the two populations separate for restoration purposes. Based on these findings, recommendations for conservation management (in situ and ex situ) are made.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by grants to S. Krishnan from the Association of Zoological Horticulture Conservation, the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Beverly Sears program of the Graduate Division. We thank Dr. Franck Rakotonasolo, Ueshima Coffee Corporation, and the teams of National Center of Applied Research and Rural Development (FOFIFA), QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM), and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Madagascar (Kew Madagascar Conservation Center—KMCC) for their valuable collaboration and field support.
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Krishnan, S., Ranker, T.A., Davis, A.P. et al. The study of genetic diversity patterns of Coffea commersoniana, an endangered coffee species from Madagascar: a model for conservation of other littoral forest species. Tree Genetics & Genomes 9, 179–187 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-012-0545-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-012-0545-0