DOI: 10.5061/dryad.tb2rbp016
title: Forest cover at landscape scales increases male and female gametic diversity of palm seedlings

description: Genetic diversity shapes the evolutionary potential of plant populations.
 For outcrossing plants, genetic diversity is influenced by effective
 population size and by dispersal, first of paternal gametes through
 pollen, and then of paternal and maternal gametes through seeds. Forest
 loss often reduces genetic diversity, but the degree to which it
 differentially impacts the paternal and maternal contributions to genetic
 diversity and the spatial scale at which these impacts are most pronounced
 are poorly understood. To address these questions, we genotyped 504
 seedlings of the animal-dispersed palm Oenocarpus bataua collected from 29
 widely distributed sites across Ecuador and decomposed the contribution of
 paternal and maternal gametes to overall genetic diversity. The amount of
 forest cover at a landscape scale (&gt; 10 km radius) had an equally
 significant positive association with both male and female gametic
 diversity. In addition, there was a significant positive association
 between forest cover and effective population size. Stronger fine-scale
 spatial genetic structure for female versus male gametes was observed at
 sites with low forest cover, but this did not scale up to differences in
 male vs female gametic diversity. These findings show that reductions in
 forest cover at spatial scales much larger than those typically evaluated
 in ecological studies lead to significant, and equivalent, decreases of
 diversity in both male and female gametes, and that this association
 between landscape level forest loss and genetic diversity may be driven
 directly by reductions in effective population size of O. bataua, rather
 than by indirect disruptions to local dispersal processes. 
description: We sampled <i>O. bataua</i> seedlings across Ecuador
 from January through May 2017 in forested areas on both sides on the Andes
 mountain range. We used Qiagen DNeasy 96 kits to extract DNA from leaf and
 the outer seed coat. We then amplified 11 microsatellite loci using
 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and scored microsatellite genotypes using
 the program GeneMarker v. 1.85 (SoftGenetics®) using a protocol previously
 used for <i>O. bataua </i>in Ecuador. We extracted DNA from
 leaf and seed tissue from 641 seedlings from 29 sites across Ecuador. 138
 seed samples did not amplify well and were omitted from analyses, leaving
 504 samples with both leaf and corresponding seed tissue.
description: The file with multilocus leaf genotypes was used for population
 genetic analyses and to estimate the lower 95% CI for effective population
 size. The genotypes for leaf and seed tissue were used to estimate alpha
 diversity of male and female gametes. We have included the paper with the
 code for the modified gametic extraction in R. Missing alleles/genotypes
 are coded with NA. Below is the metadata for both sheets:
 
 Sample_ID Unique identifier for genetic sample UTM1 First location coordinates UTM2 Second location coordinates Site Code for site where sample was collected PROV Code for province in which sample was collected UTMZone Code for the UTM zone in which sample was collected Elevation Elevation for sample Failed_Loci Number of loci failed to genotype