Long-term demographic decline and late glacial divergence in a Californian paleoendemic: Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia).

ABSTRACT: Mediterranean ecosystems comprise a high proportion of endemic taxa whose response to climate change will depend on their evolutionary origins. In the California flora, relatively little attention has been given to the evolutionary history of paleoendemics from a molecular perspective, yet they number among some of the world's most iconic plant species. Here, we address questions of demographic change in Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia) that is restricted to a narrow belt of groves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We ask whether the current distribution is a result of northward colonization since the last glacial maximum (LGM), restriction of a broader range in the recent past (LGM) or independent colonizations in the deeper past. Genetic diversity at eleven microsatellite loci decr

SUBMITTER: Dodd RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4870217 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature