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Landscape genetic structure of natural populations of Acacia caven in Argentina

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Abstract

Acacia caven is a South American species which shows remarkable climate tolerance and ecological adaptability; as such, this species is suitable for colonizing anthropogenically degraded sites. This species is widely distributed, and six varieties have been described based on both morphological traits and molecular markers. Moreover, Aronson (1992) suggests that, for this species, geographical separation could be associated with ecological differentiation. In this study, amplified fragment length polymorphisms were used to study genetic variation within and among 15 populations of A. caven from five eco-regions of Argentina and to investigate (1) whether the varieties are genetically coherent, (2) whether the varieties correspond consistently to a single eco-region, (3) the proportion of the species diversity explained within and among varieties and eco-regions. Eight of the 225 bands appear to be under positive selection. The remaining 217 neutral loci showed a high percentage of polymorphism (99.1%). The estimates of genetic diversity H j were generally high. The F ST (0.315) was highly significant, providing evidence for genetic structure among populations. Hierarchical analysis of molecular variance indicated that variation among eco-regions was 8.2% and highly significant. The higher component of variance was found within populations (67.5%). STRUCTURE analysis suggested that the optimal number of K = 11. The results showed that, in most cases, geographic separation is associated with ecological differentiation. Since differentiation of A. caven populations studied here in eco-regions was highly significant, sampling should include a large number of trees within populations as well as covering the wide ecological diversity of the species.

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Acknowledgments

The authors of this work want to thank Dra. Ana María Cialdella of Instituto de Botánica Darwinion, who kindly determined the material studied here. This work was supported by the Universidad de Buenos Aires (EX201 and 20020100100008 to B. O. S.) and the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (PIP 11220090100147 to J. C. V.).

Ethical standards

In order to fulfill the objectives proposed, the experiments conducted comply with the current Argentine laws and all the trials were made without disturbing the natural ecosystem taking into consideration the current legislation in the country. For the experimental laboratory practice done at Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales (Universidad de Buenos Aires), we followed the recommendations from Servicio de Higiene y Seguridad (SHyS, FCEyN, UBA).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución, Pabellón 2, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1428, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Carolina L. Pometti, Cecilia F. Bessega, Juan C. Vilardi & Beatriz O. Saidman

  2. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Carolina L. Pometti, Cecilia F. Bessega, Juan C. Vilardi & Beatriz O. Saidman

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  1. Carolina L. Pometti
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  2. Cecilia F. Bessega
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  3. Juan C. Vilardi
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  4. Beatriz O. Saidman
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Correspondence to Carolina L. Pometti.

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Communicated by G. G. Vendramin

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Pometti, C.L., Bessega, C.F., Vilardi, J.C. et al. Landscape genetic structure of natural populations of Acacia caven in Argentina. Tree Genetics & Genomes 8, 911–924 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-012-0479-6

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