Abstract
Cedrus brevifolia is a narrowly distributed conifer species, currently limited to a single mountain in Cyprus, growing in restricted habitats on sites of different densities and sizes. This study assessed the influence of seed and pollen dispersal, as well as the effect of demographic and genetic features on the magnitude of fine-scale spatial genetic structure (SGS). Sampling was performed in 11 plots where 50 neighboring adult trees were sampled from each plot, while biparentally and paternally inherited genomes were used for analysis with microsatellites. Fine-scale SGS was significant but showed contrasting patterns among plots. Although the magnitude of SGS in C. brevifolia mainly results from restricted seed dispersal, short-distance pollen dispersal could also explain fine-scale SGS in some plots, which is rather uncommon in wind-pollinated conifer species. The lack of a general and consistent trend of SGS among plots and between genomes indicates that pollen and seed dispersal varies at plot level. The complex SGS patterns in C. brevifolia may result from the unequal ratio of male and female strobilies of trees within the same plots, at different reproductive periods. Demographic features such as habitat fragmentation did not influence the magnitude of SGS in C. brevifolia, whereas low tree aggregation reduced it. Further, the significant correlation observed between linkage disequilibrium (LD) and plots with significant SGS supports the assumption that under specific conditions, LD is likely to be caused by the magnitude of SGS.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Cyprus Department of Forests for providing the basic data for the map design and also for the valuable help in sampling. Many thanks to Dr. S. Oddou-Muratorio, Dr. F. Lefèvre, and Dr. K. Csillery (INRA Avignon) for their comments on this manuscript. Warm gratitude is extended to Dr. M. Heuertz for her support in using the C++ code kindly provided by Dr. O. Hardy. Writing of the manuscript was made possible by financial support to Nicolas-George Eliades from the Mobility Center of the European Network of Excellence EVOLTREE (EVOLution of TREEs as drivers of terrestrial biodiversity, http://www.evoltree.org/) while visiting INRA Avignon. The comments of five reviewers and the associate editor in charge significantly improved the manuscript.
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Genotypes of the individuals analyzed are available from the Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.163968
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N-GE and RF conceived the study. N-GE completed the sampling in the field. N-GE and OG carried out the molecular analyses. N-GE and BF analyzed the data. N-GE, BF, OG, LL and RF wrote the paper.
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Communicated by G. G. Vendramin
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ESM 1
Distribution of the sampled trees within each sampling plot of C. brevifolia; distances among trees are given in meters. (EPS 9642 kb)
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Eliades, NG.H., Fady, B., Gailing, O. et al. Significant patterns of fine-scale spatial genetic structure in a narrow endemic wind-dispersed tree species, Cedrus brevifolia Henry. Tree Genetics & Genomes 14, 15 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-018-1231-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-018-1231-7