Abstract
Two alder species (Alnus glutinosa and A. incana) have overlapping distribution, naturally occur in Lithuania, and are considered ecologically and economically important forest tree species. The objective of our study was to estimate the likelihood of spontaneous hybridizations between native alders in natural stands of Lithuania based on leaf morphology and nuclear microsatellite markers. The sampled trees were assigned to the three taxonomic groups of A. glutinosa, A. incana, and potential hybrids based on the leaf and bark morphological traits. The genetic differentiation and potential hybridization between these three groups was tested based on 15 nSSR markers. We identified studied Alnus spp. individuals as pure species and hybrids. Two microsatellite loci were reported as discriminating well between these species. We concluded that our results showed the highest likelihood of two genetic group structures, a clear genetic differentiation between the morphology-based groups of A. glutinosa and A. incana, and rather variable likelihood values in the putative hybrid group. The results provide important implications for genetic conservation and management of Alnus spp.
Highlights
Spontaneous natural interspecific hybridization provides a source of genetic variation, where hybrid populations often contains higher genetic diversity than their parental species, upon which natural selection may act [1]
Based onGenetic the on-site morphologic identification according to leaves and stem traits, 3.1
The results showed a clear speciation of the tree species groups as identified by the NewHybrids analyses (Figure 4)
Summary
Spontaneous natural interspecific hybridization provides a source of genetic variation, where hybrid populations often contains higher genetic diversity than their parental species, upon which natural selection may act [1]. Natural interspecific hybridization of plants has been studied for a decades, and it is common to many species [1,2,3,4,5]. Hybridization can increase allelic variability and transmit adaptively important genetic information, which can increase the fitness of an introgressed lineage [6,7,8,9,10]. Introgressive hybridization plays an important role in evolution, increasing genetic diversity by creating many new genotypes, which can lead to the creation of new strains, ecotypes, or even sexual species adapted to certain conditions [1,4,11,12,13]. A. incana (L.) Moench. is native to most of Central Europe, to the west towards
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