The Arctic is undergoing dramatic environmental change with rapidly rising surface temperatures, accelerating sea ice decline and changing snow regimes, all of which influence tundra plant phenology. Despite these changes, no globally consistent direction of trends in spring phenology has been reported across the Arctic. While spring has advanced at some sites, spring has delayed or not changed at other sites, highlighting sub...

Acacias across Africa have enormous ecological and economic importance, yet their population genetics are poorly studied. We used seven microsatellite loci to investigate spatial genetic structure and to identify potential ecological and geographic barriers to dispersal in the widespread acacia, Senegalia (Acacia) mellifera . We quantified variation among 791 individuals from 28 sampling locations, examining patterns at two sp...

The early genetic effects of habitat degradation were investigated in the critically endangered conifer Araucaria nemorosa . This species occurs in New Caledonia, a global biodiversity hotspot where the world's greatest concentration of endemic conifer species coincides with an extremely high level of habitat destruction due to fire and mining. Using seven microsatellite loci, estimates were made of genetic marker variation, i...

Sustainable forest restoration and management practices require a thorough understanding of the influence that habitat fragmentation has on the processes shaping genetic variation and its distribution in tree populations. We quantified genetic variation at isozyme markers and chloroplast DNA (cpDNA), analysed by polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR‐RFLP) in severely fragmented populations of...

Understanding the processes that have given rise to polyploid hybrid taxa is central to our understanding of plant evolution. In this study, we use an array of genetic markers in a population analysis to elucidate the hybrid origins of the Arran whitebeams Sorbus arranensis and S. pseudofennica, two woody plant taxa endemic to the Isle of Arran, Scotland. It has been proposed that S. arranensis was derived by hybridization bet...

Variation in the chloroplast genome of Ilex aquifolium (English holly), a dioecious evergreen tree native to south, west and central Europe, was analysed using polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphisms (PCR‐RFLPs) and microsatellites. Differentiation between populations was high ( G ST = 0.595) and evidence for phylogeographical structure was detected ( N ST = 0.697, significantly higher than G ST )....

Variation in the chloroplast genome of Calluna vulgaris (heather), the dominant species of northwest European heath communities, was analysed using polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphisms (PCR–RFLPs) and microsatellites. No length polymorphisms were detected in the 100–200 base pair (bp) fragments amplified by the conserved microsatellite primers, and sequencing revealed that the repeat regions were...

The geographical structure of mitochondrial (mt)DNA variants (mitotypes) was investigated in 38 western European populations of Scots pine Pinus sylvestris using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of total DNA and a homologous cox1 probe. Three major mitotypes (designated a, b and d ) were detected. Within Spain all three major mitotypes were found, gene diversity was high, H T = 0.586, and this diversity...