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Stepping stones or stone dead? Fecundity, pollen dispersal and mating patterns of roadside Qualea grandiflora Mart. trees

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Abstract

Forest fragmentation may affect mating and pollen dispersal patterns through conversion of continuous forests into small, spatially isolated remnant patches and individual trees in an anthropogenic landscape. We investigated reproductive investment and success, pollen dispersal, mating system, and genetic diversity and spatial structure of Qualea grandiflora trees in two environmental contexts: a continuous natural Cerrado area and isolated individuals on roadsides. Roadside trees produced more flowers and more fruit than Cerrado trees. Pollen dispersal kernels were fat-tailed in both contexts, indicating long-distance dispersal, but in Cerrado the mean pollen dispersal distance (524.7 m) and the effective number of pollen donors per mother-tree (Nep = 12.7) were higher than for roadside trees (60.9 m, Nep = 4.6). The levels and structure of genetic diversity, outcrossing rates (\(t_{m}\) > 0.98), and mating among relatives (\(t_{m} - t_{s}\) < 0.1) were similar in both environmental contexts. Allelic richness and number of private alleles were similar between the two environments. The fixation index was significantly lower in adults (minimum of 0.08) than in offspring (minimum of 0.23) in both contexts, suggesting selection against inbred individuals between offspring and adult stage. Our results indicate that the spatial isolation of roadside trees, by increasing the number of flowers produced, decreased pollinator movements, thereby reducing effective pollen flow and the number of pollen donors. All these results suggest that roadside trees can be used for harvesting seeds for recovery plans, and that these trees are a biological legacy, and reservoir of Q. grandiflora genetic diversity, from the original Cerrado forest.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, Process number 2014/17472-5) and CMP, AMS, PEO, and AF are recipients of Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) fellowships. We are grateful to Centrovias Sistemas Rodoviários S/A for field support, to Alexandre M. da Silva for the map design. We thank Anne Roig (URFM, INRA) for the assistance in completing the genotyping. SOM and EK were granted by the FCT-ANR EXPANDTREE project (FCT-ANR-13-ISV7-0003-01). TL was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Biologia, Universidade de Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Carolina M. Potascheff

  2. Unité de Recherches Forestières Méditerranéennes, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Domaine Saint Paul, Avignon, France

    Sylvie Oddou-Muratorio

  3. BioSP, Biostatistique et Processus Spatiaux, INRA, Domaine Saint Paul, Avignon, France

    Etienne K. Klein

  4. Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura, Universidade de São Paulo, Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil

    Antonio Figueira & Eduardo A. Bressan

  5. Departamento de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Paulo E.  Oliveira

  6. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3RB, UK

    Tonya A. Lander

  7. Instituto Florestal de São Paulo, Seção de Melhoramento e Conservação Genética Florestal, Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil

    Alexandre M. Sebbenn

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  1. Carolina M. Potascheff
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Potascheff, C.M., Oddou-Muratorio, S., Klein, E.K. et al. Stepping stones or stone dead? Fecundity, pollen dispersal and mating patterns of roadside Qualea grandiflora Mart. trees. Conserv Genet 20, 1355–1367 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-019-01217-w

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