Ecology Letters (2012) 15 : 378–392 Abstract Forest trees are the dominant species in many parts of the world and predicting how they might respond to climate change is a vital global concern. Trees are capable of long‐distance gene flow, which can promote adaptive evolution in novel environments by increasing genetic variation for fitness. It is unclear, however, if this can compensate for maladaptive effects of gene flow and...

Several methods have been developed to estimate the selfing rate of a population from a sample of individuals genotyped for several marker loci. These methods can be based on homozygosity excess (or inbreeding), identity disequilibrium, progeny array (PA) segregation or population assignment incorporating partial selfing. Progeny array–based method is generally the best because it is not subject to some assumptions made by oth...

As part of a genomics strategy to characterize inducible defences against insect herbivory in poplar, we developed a comprehensive suite of functional genomics resources including cDNA libraries, expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and a cDNA microarray platform. These resources are designed to complement the existing poplar genome sequence and poplar ( Populus spp.) ESTs by focusing on herbivore‐ and elicitor‐treated tissues and i...

Estimators for pairwise relatedness designed for dominant markers are derived, based on a genetic model that accounts for the full structure of pairwise relatedness between two individuals at a diploid locus with dominance. They jointly estimate ‘relatedness’ and ‘fraternity’, in which case the estimators are inherently multilocus, as at least two loci of differing gene frequency are required. Extensions to cases of zero frate...

This paper presents a perspective of how inferred relatedness, based on genetic marker data such as microsatellites or amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs), can be used to demonstrate quantitative genetic variation in natural populations. Variation at two levels is considered: among pairs of individuals within populations, and among pairs of subpopulations within a population. In the former, inferred pairwise relate...