The relationship between neutral and adaptive genetic diversity in the context of historic and present land use and landscape structure - GENLAND

土地利用极大地影响植物的种群结构和进化潜力，并可通过影响中性过程和数量性状来影响植物的遗传多样性。稀有植物预计会比普通植物遭受更多的遗传漂移，这可能会影响中性和适应性变异。除了遗传过程外，表观遗传变异可能会影响表型变异，但很少在自然群体中表现出来。这个后续项目使用几种方法来探讨这些问题。首先，我们将通过测定与第一阶段项目中包括的常见物种互补的中性标记和稀有物种的数量性状的遗传多样性和种群结构，来测试土地利用对植物物种遗传多样性的影响是否取决于物种的丰度。在这里，我们还从历史的角度来确定历史和现在土地利用的作用。其次，我们比较了植物的中性和数量遗传变异，以确定与适应过程相比，土地利用对选择性中性过程的影响是否不同。此外，我们使用基因组扫描的方法来识别AFLP标记，这些标记可能受到自然选择的影响。第三，我们将量化表观遗传变异与中性和数量遗传变异。虽然表观遗传变异对生态学和微进化的潜力已经被证明，但在自然环境中对其在非模式物种中的相对作用的评估在很大程度上是缺乏的。因此，我们评估了跨等级水平的甲基化多态。总体而言，该项目将能够测试现在和历史上的土地利用在物种丰度方面对中性和适应性遗传和表观遗传多样性的作用。

Land use strongly affects population structure and evolutionary potential of plants and can influence plant genetic diversity by affecting neutral processes as well as quantitative traits. Rare plants are expected to suffer more from genetic drift than common plants, which may affect both neutral and adaptive variation. In addition to genetic process, epigenetic variation may affect phenotypic variation, but has rarely been characterized in natural populations. This follow-up project explores these issues using several approaches. Firstly, we will test whether land use influences genetic diversity of plant species differently depending on species’ abundance by determining genetic diversity and population structure both of neutral markers and quantitative traits of rare species complementary to the common species included in the first phase of the project. Here we also take a historical perspective to determine the role of historic and present land use. Secondly, we compare neutral and quantitative genetic variation in plants to determine whether land use affects selectively neutral processes differently compared to adaptive processes. Moreover, we use a genome scan approach to identify AFLP markers that putatively have been subject to natural selection. Thirdly, we will quantify epigenetic variation in parallel to neutral and quantitative genetic variation. While the potential of epigenetic variation for ecology and microevolution has been proven, the assessment of its relative role in non model species in natural settings is largely lacking. Therefore, we assess methylation polymorphisms across hierarchical levels. Overall, the project will allow testing the role of present and historic land use on neutral and adaptive genetic and epigenetic diversity with regard to species’ abundance.