Phylogeography, postglacial gene flow, and population history of boreal tree species Alnus incana in Central Europe

Valérie Poupon

Master's thesis

Abstract:

This study explored colonization routes of the grey alder, Alnus incana, in Central Europe. It relies on data reported by Mandák et al. (2016) using chloroplast DNA and microsatellites analyses on 65 populations all over the tree European range. The authors suggested that Fennoscandia was not colonized by Eastern Europe and that from cryptic refugia in Central Europe, populations spread north to Fennoscandia. Due to the broad scale of the study, only few populations were sampled in central Europe thereby providing an imprecise picture of this area. In order to better understand the migration pattern in this area and maybe discover from which part of Central Europe exactly the Fennoscandian populations take their origin, we sampled and analyzed in this study 13 populations for 18 nuclear microsatellites loci from the mountains of Central Europe (i.e. Krušné hory, Český les, Šumava, Krkonoše and Beskydy Mountains). Microsatellites dataset of 51 populations from Mandák et al. (2016) was also added in our analyses. In this diploma thesis, the field of study that we explored is phylogeography. More specifically, we analyzed here nuclear markers diversity of present populations to retrace the species history. Our analyses showed the presence of relatively clearly defined genetic clusters in the Western Alps, Eastern Alps, South Eastern Europe (i.e. Carpathians and Balkans) and Scandinavia as well as a mixture of clusters in all the populations that we sampled in Central Europe. Moreover the common cluster of Scandinavia is fairly present in the North of the Czech Republic indicating that the colonization of Scandinavia probably took place from the cryptic refugia situated in the low land of Central Europe. The results also highlight the possibility that a connection has occurred between the populations of the Carpathians and the Baltic countries.

Keywords

Alnus incana, post glacial migration, gene flow, microsatellites

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 18. 4. 2017

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Bohumil Mandák, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Environmental Sciences

Master programme / field:
Engineering Ecology / Nature Conservation