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The influence of spatial scale on the genetic structure of a widespread tropical wetland tree, Pterocarpus officinalis (Fabaceae)

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Abstract

Identifying factors that cause genetic differentiation in plant populations and the spatial scale at which genetic structuring can be detected will help to understand plant population dynamics and identify conservation units. In this study, we determined the genetic structure and diversity of Pterocarpus officinalis, a widespread tropical wetland tree, at three spatial scales: (1) drainage basin “watershed” (<10 km), (2) within Puerto Rico (<100 km), and (3) Caribbean-wide (>1000 km) using AFLP. At all three spatial scales, most of the genetic variation occurred within populations, but as the spatial scale increased from the watershed to the Caribbean region, there was an increase in the among population variation (ΦST=0.19 to ΦST=0.53). At the watershed scale, there was no significant differentiation (P=0.77) among populations in the different watersheds, although there was some evidence that montane and coastal populations differed (P<0.01). At the island scale, there was significant differentiation (P<0.001) among four populations in Puerto Rico. At the regional scale (>1000 km), we found significant differentiation (P<0.001) between island and continental populations in the Caribbean region, which we attributed to factors associated with the colonization history of P. officinalis in the Neotropics. Given that genetic structure can occur from local to regional spatial scales, it is critical that conservation recommendations be based on genetic information collected at the appropriate spatial scale.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Steve Rehner, Nicola Flanagan and Dan Lindstrom for valuable discussions and technical advice. We also thank Cristine Heredia and Carlos González for assistance with the experiments. We are grateful to the following people for their help with field collection: Neftalí Rios, Tamara Heartsill and Manuel Ramírez in Puerto Rico; Jess Zimmerman and Louis Redaud in Guadeloupe; Omar López, José Luis Andrade, and Eric Graham in Panama; William Miranda, Deborah Clark, and David Clark in Costa Rica; Andy Whitwell and the Wildlife Section-Forestry Division in Trinidad; Ernesto Medina of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto para la Conservación del Lago Maracaibo, and the Instituto Nacional de Parques in Venezuela. We are especially grateful to Andrés García and the International Institute of Tropical Forestry for the help in field collections and logistical support for the watershed scale. We thank François Lefèvre, Ivania Cerón, Neftalí Rios, Christopher Dick, and four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript. This project received financial support from the University of Puerto Rico, CREST-National Science Foundation program, Organization for Tropical Studies-post course fellowship to ERO, NASA-IRA to TMA and the National Science Foundation to WOM (DEB- 9806792).

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras, 23360, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 00931-3360, USA

    Elsie Rivera-Ocasio, T. Mitchell Aide & W. Owen McMillan

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  1. Elsie Rivera-Ocasio
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Correspondence to Elsie Rivera-Ocasio.

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Rivera-Ocasio, E., Aide, T. & McMillan, W. The influence of spatial scale on the genetic structure of a widespread tropical wetland tree, Pterocarpus officinalis (Fabaceae). Conserv Genet 7, 251–266 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-005-9022-8

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