Abstract
Intraspecific genetic variation in natural populations governs their potential to overcome challenging ecological and environmental conditions. In addition, knowledge of this variation is critical for the conservation and management of endangered plant taxa. Found in the Himalayas, Podophyllum hexandrum is an endangered high-elevation plant species that has great medicinal importance. Here we report on the genetic diversity analysis of 24 P. hexandrum populations (209 individuals), representing the whole of the Indian Himalayas. In the present study, seven amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) primer pairs generated 1677 fragments, of which 866 were found to be polymorphic. Neighbour joining clustering, principal coordinate analysis and STRUCTURE analysis clustered 209 individuals from 24 populations of the Indian Himalayan mountains into two major groups with a significant amount of gene flow (Nm = 2.13) and moderate genetic differentiation Fst(0.196), G'st(0.20). This suggests that, regardless of geographical location, all of the populations from the Indian Himalayas are intermixed and are composed broadly of two types of genetic populations. High variance partitioned within populations (80 %) suggests that most of the diversity is restricted to the within-population level. These results suggest two possibilities about the ancient population structure of P. hexandrum: either all of the populations in the geographical region of the Indian Himalayas are remnants of a once-widespread ancient population, or they originated from two types of genetic populations, which coexisted a long time ago, but subsequently separated as a result of long-distance dispersal and natural selection. High variance partitioned within the populations indicates that these populations have evolved in response to their respective environments over time, but low levels of heterozygosity suggest the presence of historical population bottlenecks.
Highlights
Throughout history, one of the many ways in which humans have benefited from plant diversity is as a source of traditional medicines
Using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers, we have examined 209 individuals of 24 natural populations of P. hexandrum, representing the wider geographical area of the entire Indian Himalayas ranging from the states of Jammu and Kashmir, and including the Zanskar region, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand to Sikkim
Overall heterozygosity (Nei’s unbiased diversity, uh) estimates recorded in the AFLP analysis were found to be very low, with the maximum observed heterozygosity (0.155 + 0.008) in the Eastern Himalayan population collected from Sikkim and the lowest heterozygosity in the Sural Pangi population (0.043 + 0.005)
Summary
Throughout history, one of the many ways in which humans have benefited from plant diversity is as a source of traditional medicines. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as many as 80 % of the world’s populations depend on traditional medicine for their primary health-care needs (WHO 1993). Most traditional therapy involves the use of plant extracts or their active principles. In the present era, unprecedented growth in global population has led to subsequent increase in human demands and overexploitation of the earth’s plant resources
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