There’s a small chance you’ll remember that about six months ago I posted about a pre-print on which I am co-author. I’m pleased to report that the paper was published in the December issue of the American Journal of Botany. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me retweet a couple of times about this already, but I thought I’d make a post here. It’s been a long time since I posted anything, and I hope to get back into the habit of writing something every week or two. Here’s the abstract and link in case you’re interested.
Abstract
Premise
The distribution of genetic diversity on the landscape has critical ecological and evolutionary implications. This may be especially the case on a local scale for foundation plant species because they create and define ecological communities, contributing disproportionately to ecosystem function.
Methods
We examined the distribution of genetic diversity and clones, which we defined first as unique multilocus genotypes (MLG), and then by grouping similar MLGs into multilocus lineages. We used 186 markers from inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) across 358 ramets from 13 patches of the foundation grass Leymus chinensis. We examined the relationship between genetic and clonal diversities, their variation with patch size, and the effect of the number of markers used to evaluate genetic diversity and structure in this species.
Results
Every ramet had a unique MLG. Almost all patches consisted of individuals belonging to a single multilocus lineages. We confirmed this with a clustering algorithm to group related genotypes. The predominance of a single lineage within each patch could be the result of the accumulation of somatic mutations, limited dispersal, some sexual reproduction with partners mainly restricted to the same patch, or a combination of all three.
Conclusions
We found strong genetic structure among patches of L. chinensis. Consistent with previous work on the species, the clustering of similar genotypes within patches suggests that clonal reproduction combined with somatic mutation, limited dispersal, and some degree of sexual reproduction among neighbors causes individuals within a patch to be more closely related than among patches.