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A climatic relict or a long distance disperser: conservation genetics of an Arctic disjunct polyploid plant

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Abstract

The Primula sibirica group is a set of approximately a dozen Arctic, taxonomically unrelated plant species that share a similar disjunct distribution on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea. The origin of this phylogeographic pattern is not known. It has been suggested, first, that the species arrived after the last glaciation from the White Sea, second, that they are relicts of once larger populations or, third, that they arrived via jump dispersal. One of the species is the polyploid Creeping alkali grass, Puccinellia phryganodes, which is critically endangered in Finland. Here we used microsatellite markers to study seven extant and three extinct populations from coasts of the Bothnian Bay and the Arctic Sea (N = 297). We estimated the genetic diversity in the study populations and applied principal component analysis and Bayesian and coalescence methods to examine their population genetic structure and evolutionary history. We found that the endangered Bothnian Bay population still harbors a reasonably high amount of genetic diversity and is differentiated from the geographically closest populations. We show that Puccinellia phryganodes is more likely a climatic relict in the Bothnian Bay than a long-distance disperser and that the endangered southern population should be considered as an evolutionary significant unit rather than a mere representative of the main population.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the people who travelled to fetch the samples and were important for the initiation of the project especially Kari Koivula, Jaakko Lumme, Juha Markkola and Pirjo Rautiainen. We owe much to Jouko Siira, who started the studies on the ecology of P. phryganodes in the Bothnian Bay already in the 1960s. We also wish to acknowledge staff at Oulanka Research Station for DNA extraction and Marja Hyvärinen from Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for information of the sampling sites. This study was funded by the University of Oulu and Academy of Finland. Societas Biologica Fennica Vanamo and the Finnish Foundation for Nature Conservation provided grants to L. Aminian.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Oulu, PO Box 3000, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Laura Kvist, Leila Aminian, Jouni Aspi & Annamari Markkola

  2. Biological and Environmental Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK94LA, UK

    Romuald Rouger

  3. Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Oulu, PO Box 5400, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Marjut Kreivi

  4. Natural Resources Institute Finland, Tutkimusasemantie 15, 92400, Ruukki, Finland

    Marika Laurila

  5. Botany Unit, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, PO Box 7, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Marko Hyvärinen

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  1. Laura Kvist
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Correspondence to Laura Kvist.

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Kvist, L., Aminian, L., Rouger, R. et al. A climatic relict or a long distance disperser: conservation genetics of an Arctic disjunct polyploid plant. Conserv Genet 16, 1489–1499 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-015-0756-7

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