Abstract
Habitat loss represents one of the main threats to tropical forests, which have reached extremely high rates of species extinction. Forest loss negatively impacts biodiversity, affecting ecological (e.g., seed dispersal) and genetic (e.g., genetic diversity and structure) processes. Therefore, understanding how deforestation influences genetic resources is strategic for conservation. Our aim was to empirically evaluate the effects of landscape‐scale forest reduction on the spatial genetic structure and gene flow of Euterpe edulis Mart (Arecaceae), a palm tree considered a keystone resource for many vertebrate species. This study was carried out in nine forest remnants in the Atlantic Forest, northeastern Brazil, located in landscapes within a gradient of forest cover (19–83%). We collected leaves of 246 adults and 271 seedlings and performed genotyping using microsatellite markers. Our results showed that the palm populations had low spatial genetic structure, indicating that forest reduction did not influence this genetic parameter for neither seedlings nor adults. However, forest loss decreased the gene flow distance, which may negatively affect the genetic diversity of future generations by increasing the risk of local extinction of this keystone palm. For efficient strategies of genetic variability conservation and maintenance of gene flow in E. edulis, we recommend the maintenance of landscapes with intermediary to high levels of forest cover, that is, forest cover above 40%.
Highlights
Forest loss is the main threat to biodiversity, contributing to the unprecedented levels of the current high rates of species extinction, in tropical regions (Pimm et al 2014)
The spatial genetic structure of E. edulis populations showed low values of average relatedness coefficient (Fij) on both ontogenetic stages and they were not related to distance class (Fig. 2A and B)
We showed an increase in seedlings with parental assignment and a decrease in gene flow distance in more deforested landscapes
Summary
Forest loss is the main threat to biodiversity, contributing to the unprecedented levels of the current high rates of species extinction, in tropical regions (Pimm et al 2014). With the exception of a few wilderness areas, most of extant species in the tropics currently occur in anthropogenic landscapes, where previous continuous forest has been reduced to smaller and increasingly isolated patches Such change in the amount of remnant forest and the consequent modification of the landscape composition and structure, that is, habitat fragmentation, have important implications for species persistence. Understanding how such anthropogenic disturbances determine the current biodiversity patterns is a priority for conservation (Keller et al 2014; Valiente-Banuet et al 2014).
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