Pleistocene population expansions of shade-tolerant trees indicate fragmentation of the African rainforest during the Ice Ages.

ABSTRACT: The fossil record in tropical Africa suggests that dry conditions during the Ice Ages caused expansion of savannahs and contraction of the rainforest. Forest refugia have been proposed to be located in areas of Central Africa that currently harbour high rates of endemic species. However, to what extent the forest was fragmented remains unknown. Nuclear microsatellites and plastid sequences of 732 trees of two species occurring in the same habitat-mature lowland evergreen rainforests-but with remarkably different dispersal capacities-animal versus gravity-were analysed. Geographical information system tools revealed intraspecific lineages partially congruent across the two species, suggesting common past barriers to gene flow in Central Africa. According to approximate Bayesian computation,

SUBMITTER: Pineiro R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5698650 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature