Resilience of genetic diversity in forest trees over the Quaternary.

ABSTRACT: The effect of past environmental changes on the demography and genetic diversity of natural populations remains a contentious issue and has rarely been investigated across multiple, phylogenetically distant species. Here, we perform comparative population genomic analyses and demographic inferences for seven widely distributed and ecologically contrasting European forest tree species based on concerted sampling of 164 populations across their natural ranges. For all seven species, the effective population size, N_e, increased or remained stable over many glacial cycles and up to 15 million years in the most extreme cases. Surprisingly, the drastic environmental changes associated with the Pleistocene glacial cycles have had little impact on the level of genetic diversity of domin

SUBMITTER: Milesi P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11473659 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature