Genomic reconstruction of 100 000-year grassland history in a forested country: population dynamics of specialist forbs.

ABSTRACT: Grassland ecosystems worldwide have been extensively converted to other land uses and are globally imperiled. Because many grasslands have been maintained by human activities, understanding their origin and history is fundamentally important to better contemporary management. However, existing methods to reconstruct past vegetation can produce contrasting views on grassland history. Here, we inferred demographic histories of 40 populations of four grassland forb species throughout Japan using high-resolution genome sequences and model-flexible demographic simulation based on the site frequency spectrum. Although two species showed a slight decline in population size between 100 000-10 000 years ago, our results suggest that population sizes of studied species have been maintained within th

SUBMITTER: Yamaura Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6548723 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature