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A Study of the Genetic Diversity and Differentiation of Northern and Southern Curly Birch Populations

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Abstract

The genetic diversity of northern (in the Republic of Karelia and Finland) and southern (in Belarus) populations of curly birch Betula pendula Roth var. carelica (Mercklin) Hämet-Ahti was compared using microsatellite analysis. As a result, their common features as well as some genetic peculiarities were revealed. We found that the curly birch populations had a fairly high allelic diversity simultaneously with observed heterozygosity not as high as expected, indicating that the accumulation of homozygotes prevailed in the populations, thus increasing the risk of their degradation, especially for northern populations, which have already declined sharply in the past few decades. In the southern population, the allelic diversity turned out to be somewhat higher than in northern ones, possibly due to a larger size and slight fragmentation. Cluster analysis confirmed the separation of the southern population from its northern counterparts, which to some degree corresponds to the well-known “isolation by distance” phenomenon.

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Funding

This work was carried out from the federal budget within the framework of the state assignment of the Federal Research Centre Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Forest Institute of the KarRC RAS, the Institute of Biology of the KarRC RAS, and the Department of Complex Scientific Research of the KarRC RAS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Forest Research Institute, Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, 185910, Petrozavodsk, Russia

    L. V. Vetchinnikova

  2. Institute of Biology, Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, 185910, Petrozavodsk, Russia

    A. F. Titov & L. V. Topchieva

  3. Department for Multidisciplinary Scientific Research, Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, 185910, Petrozavodsk, Russia

    A. F. Titov

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  1. L. V. Vetchinnikova
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  2. A. F. Titov
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Correspondence to L. V. Vetchinnikova.

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Vetchinnikova, L.V., Titov, A.F. & Topchieva, L.V. A Study of the Genetic Diversity and Differentiation of Northern and Southern Curly Birch Populations. Russ J Genet 57, 416–422 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795421040141

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