Masting and Efficient Production of Seedlings: Balancing Costs of Variation Through Synchronised Fruiting.

The efficient conversion of tissues into reproductive success is a crucial aspect affecting the evolution of life histories. Masting, the interannually variable and synchronous seed production in perennial plants, is a strategy that can enhance reproductive efficiency by mitigating seed predation and pollen limitation. However, evaluating benefits is insufficient to establish whether efficiency has improved, as such assessments neglect the associated costs of masting, particularly during the critical seed-to-seedling stage.

Genomic prediction of resistance to in common ash ( L.) populations.

The increase in introduced insect pests and pathogens due to anthropogenic environmental changes has become a major concern for tree species worldwide. Common ash ( L.) is one of such species facing a significant threat from the invasive fungal pathogen .

Genetic resources of common ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) in Poland.

Background: Knowledge of genetic structure and the factors that shape it has an impact on forest management practices. European ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) has declined dramatically throughout its range as a result of a disease caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.

Relatives reproduce in synchrony: kinship and individual condition shape intraspecific variation in masting phenotype.

Masting (synchronous and interannually variable seed production) is frequently called a reproductive strategy; yet it is unclear whether the reproductive behaviour of individuals has a heritable component. To address this, we used 22 years of annual fruit production data from 110 L. trees to examine the contributions of genetic factors to the reproductive phenotype of individuals, while controlling for environmental variation.

Signatures of local adaptation to current and future climate in phenology-related genes in natural populations of Quercus robur.

Background: Local adaptation is a key evolutionary process that enhances the growth of plants in their native habitat compared to non-native habitats, resulting in patterns of adaptive genetic variation across the entire geographic range of the species. The study of population adaptation to local environments and predicting their response to future climate change is important because of climate change.

Results: Here, we explored the genetic diversity of candidate genes associated with bud burst in pedunculate oak individuals sampled from 6 populations in Poland.

A novel synthesis of two decades of microsatellite studies on European beech reveals decreasing genetic diversity from glacial refugia.

Unlabelled: Genetic diversity influences the evolutionary potential of forest trees under changing environmental conditions, thus indirectly the ecosystem services that forests provide. European beech ( L.) is a dominant European forest tree species that increasingly suffers from climate change-related die-back.

A Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly of the European Beech () Reveals Anomalies for Organelle DNA Integration, Repeat Content and Distribution of SNPs.

The European Beech is the dominant climax tree in most regions of Central Europe and valued for its ecological versatility and hardwood timber. Even though a draft genome has been published recently, higher resolution is required for studying aspects of genome architecture and recombination. Here, we present a chromosome-level assembly of the more than 300 year-old reference individual, Bhaga, from the Kellerwald-Edersee National Park (Germany).

Phylogeny of Maleae (Rosaceae) Based on Complete Chloroplast Genomes Supports the Distinction of , and as Separate Genera, Different from sp.

Several genera formerly contained within the genus L. have been proposed as separate taxa, including , and . However, molecular evidence for such distinctions are rather scarce.

Complete Chloroplast Genomes of L. Reveal Sequence Conservation in the Inverted Repeat and the Presence of Allelic Variation in NUPTs.

Growing amounts of genomic data and more efficient assembly tools advance organelle genomics at an unprecedented scale. Genomic resources are increasingly used for phylogenetic analyses of many plant species, but are less frequently used to investigate within-species variability and phylogeography. In this study, we investigated genetic diversity of an important broadleaved tree species of European forests, based on complete chloroplast genomes of 18 individuals sampled widely across the species distribution.

Genomic signatures of natural selection at phenology-related genes in a widely distributed tree species Fagus sylvatica L.

Background: Diversity among phenology-related genes is predicted to be a contributing factor in local adaptations seen in widely distributed plant species that grow in climatically variable geographic areas, such as forest trees. European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) is widespread, and is one of the most important broadleaved tree species in Europe; however, its potential for adaptation to climate change is a matter of uncertainty, and little is known about the molecular basis of climate change-relevant traits like bud burst.

A reference genome of the European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.).

Background: The European beech is arguably the most important climax broad-leaved tree species in Central Europe, widely planted for its valuable wood. Here, we report the 542 Mb draft genome sequence of an up to 300-year-old individual (Bhaga) from an undisturbed stand in the Kellerwald-Edersee National Park in central Germany.

Findings: Using a hybrid assembly approach, Illumina reads with short- and long-insert libraries, coupled with long Pacific Biosciences reads, we obtained an assembled genome size of 542 Mb, in line with flow cytometric genome size estimation.

Seeing the forest through the trees: comprehensive inference on individual mating patterns in a mixed stand of Quercus robur and Q. petraea.

Background And Aims: Sexual reproduction is one of the most important moments in a life cycle, determining the genetic composition of individual offspring. Controlled pollination experiments often show high variation in the mating system at the individual level, suggesting a persistence of individual variation in natural populations. Individual variation in mating patterns may have significant adaptive implications for a population and for the entire species.

NM+: software implementing parentage-based models for estimating gene dispersal and mating patterns in plants.

NM+ is computer software designed for making inferences on plant gene dispersal and mating patterns by modelling parentage probabilities of offspring based on the spatially explicit neighbourhood model. NM+ requires a sample of mapped and genotyped candidate parents and offspring; however, offspring may optionally be assigned to single maternal parents (forming so-called half-sib progeny arrays). Using maximum likelihood, NM+ estimates a number of parameters, including proportions of offspring due to self-fertilization, pollen immigration from outside of a defined study site, parameters of pollen (and/or seed) dispersal kernels (exponential-power, Weibull, geometric or 2Dt) and selection gradients relating covariates (phenotypic traits) with male (and/or female) reproductive success.

Simultaneous estimation of null alleles and inbreeding coefficients.

Although microsatellites are a very efficient tool for many population genetics applications, they may occasionally produce "null" alleles, which, when present in high proportion, may affect estimates of key parameters such as inbreeding and relatedness coefficients or measures of genetic differentiation. In order to account for the presence of null alleles, it is first necessary to estimate their frequency within studied populations. However, the commonly used null allele frequency estimators are not of general applicability because they can produce upwardly biased estimates when a population under study experiences some inbreeding.

Presence of triploids among oak species.

Background And Aims: Polyploids, organisms that have multiple sets of chromosomes, are common in certain plant and animal taxa. However, there are only a few reports of intraspecific ploidy variation within the genus Quercus. The aim of the study was to investigate the suspected ploidy level of two oaks that have unusual microsatellite banding patterns.

Effective gene dispersal and female reproductive success in Mediterranean maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton).

Understanding population-scale processes that affect allele frequency changes across generations is a long-standing interest in genetic, ecological and evolutionary research. In particular, individual differences in female reproductive success and the spatial scale of gene flow considerably affect evolutionary change and patterns of local selection. In this study, a recently developed maximum-likelihood (ML) method based on established offspring, the Seedling Neighbourhood Model, was applied and exponentially shaped dispersal kernels were fitted to both genetic and ecological data in a widespread Mediterranean pine, Pinus pinaster Aiton.

Historical and contemporary mating patterns in remnant populations of the forest tree Fraxinus excelsior L.

Genetic variation at microsatellite markers was used to quantify genetic structure and mating behavior in a severely fragmented population of the wind-pollinated, wind-dispersed temperate tree Fraxinus excelsior in a deforested catchment in Scotland. Remnants maintain high levels of genetic diversity, comparable with those reported for continuous populations in southeastern Europe, and show low interpopulation differentiation (E = 0.080), indicating that historical gene exchange has not been limited (Nm = 3.

Parentage versus two-generation analyses for estimating pollen-mediated gene flow in plant populations.

Assessment of contemporary pollen-mediated gene flow in plants is important for various aspects of plant population biology, genetic conservation and breeding. Here, through simulations we compare the two alternative approaches for measuring pollen-mediated gene flow: (i) the NEIGHBORHOOD model--a representative of parentage analyses, and (ii) the recently developed TWOGENER analysis of pollen pool structure. We investigate their properties in estimating the effective number of pollen parents (N(ep)) and the mean pollen dispersal distance (delta).

Cautions on direct gene flow estimation in plant populations.

Through simulations we have investigated the statistical properties of two of the main approaches for directly estimating pollen gene flow (m) in plant populations: genotypic exclusion and mating models. When the assumptions about accurately known background pollen pool allelic frequencies are met, both methods provide unbiased results with comparable variances across a range of true m values. However, when presumed allelic frequencies differ from actual ones, which is more likely in research practice, both estimators are biased.