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Across-species patterns of genetic variation in forest trees of Central Europe

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Abstract

The study focuses on geographical patterns of genetic variation at allozyme loci common for four main tree species of Central Europe (Norway spruce, silver fir, common beech and sessile oak). Moving-window averaging of four indicators of allelic richness and diversity (proportion of polymorphic loci, mean number of alleles per locus, effective number of alleles and expected heterozygosity) with window size of 50 × 50 km was used to identify the patterns. Moreover, local genetic divergence was assessed using the G ST (Nei, Molecular population genetic and evolution, Amsterdam and Oxford, North-Holland, 1975) and D j (Gregorius and Roberds, Theor Appl Genet 71:826–834, 1986) statistics for common beech and silver fir, where raw genotype data were available. Spatial patterns of diversity and allelic richness were quite similar. Romanian Carpathians were identified as the most important hotspot of genetic diversity and evolutionary divergence in Central Europe. Implications for genetic conservation are briefly discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to B. Comps, A. Zanetto, A. Kremer and J. Sabor for providing their raw data. The study was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-0441-07 and the Centre of Excellence “Adaptive Forest Ecosystems” funded by the Operational Programme Research and Development financed from the European Regional Development Fund.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University in Zvolen, T.G. Masaryka 24, 960 53, Zvolen, Slovakia

    Dušan Gömöry, Ladislav Paule, Diana Krajmerová & Jarmila Schmidtová

  2. National Forestry Centre, T.G. Masaryka 22, 960 92, Zvolen, Slovakia

    Roman Longauer

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  1. Dušan Gömöry
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  2. Roman Longauer
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  3. Ladislav Paule
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Correspondence to Dušan Gömöry.

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Gömöry, D., Longauer, R., Paule, L. et al. Across-species patterns of genetic variation in forest trees of Central Europe. Biodivers Conserv 19, 2025–2038 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-010-9823-z

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