Genetic diversity in the locally declining Laserpitium prutenicum L. and the more common Selinum carvifolia (L.) L.: a "silent goodbye"?
2016
Reichel, Katja | Richter, Frank | Eichel, Lisa | Kacki, Zygmunt | Wesche, Karsten | Welk, Erik | Neinhuis, Christoph | Ritz, Christiane M. | Institut de Génétique, Environnement et Protection des Plantes (IGEPP) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université de Rennes (UR)-AGROCAMPUS OUEST | Department of Botany ; Senckenberg Natural History Museum | Institute for Botany ; Technische Universität Dresden = Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) | Institute of Biology, Geobotany and Botanical Garden ; Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg - Martin-Luther-University Halle Wittenberg (MLU) | Senckenberg Natural History Museum | Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research [Gatersleben] (IPK-Gatersleben) | Department of Botany, Institute of Environmental Biology ; University of Wrocław [Poland] (UWr) | Halle Jena Leipzig ; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) | German-Czech Erhaltungsprojekt fur seltene Pflanzen im Offenland von Bohmen und Sachsen (EPOBS) of the European Union's Ziel3/Cil3 initiative
International audience
Show more [+] Less [-]English. Evaluating the consequences of the decline of threatened species on their population genetic structure is crucial for establishing effective conservation strategies in the strongly fragmented landscapes of Central Europe. Laserpitium prutenicum is a bi- to perennial forb occurring in intermittently wet meadows and light oak forests throughout central to eastern and south-eastern Europe. During the past 70 years, the western limit of its distributional range retracted dramatically, the number of populations decreased and the remaining populations faced a considerable increase of fragmentation. To study the effects of this decline on the genetic diversity of L. prutenicum, we conducted an AFLP study on 20 populations from Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. For comparison, we collected the same data on Selinum carvifolia, a taxonomically related and both ecologically and morphologically similar species, which is still more common in the study area. Both species showed similarly weak spatial genetic structuring and intermediate genetic diversities. We attribute this result to the loss of habitat being faster than the loss of genetic diversity in smaller and fragmented populations. Depending on the ecological characteristics of a species, even a gradual disappearance is not necessarily accompanied by any detectable effect at the population genetic level ("silent goodbye"). In the case of L. prutenicum, habitat preservation should be given priority over all other conservation measures.
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