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Demographic history and population genetic structure of Hagenia abyssinica (Rosaceae), a tropical tree endemic to the Ethiopian highlands and eastern African mountains

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Abstract

The distribution of genetic diversity among natural populations is significantly shaped by geographical and environmental heterogeneity. The key objectives of this study were to outline the population genetic structure and to investigate the effects of historical and current factors in shaping the population structure of an endemic tropical tree, Hagenia abyssinica. We used 11 polymorphic microsatellites to estimate genetic variability and evaluate gene flow among natural populations of H. abyssinica. Further, we employed ecological niche modeling approaches, to analyze the demographic history and map potential distributions of H. abyssinica during the Last Glacial Maximum and the present. Significant levels of genetic diversity (H O = 0.477, H E = 0.439) were observed among the sampled locations. High coefficient of genetic differentiation (F ST = 0.32) and considerable genetic variation within the sampled locations (68.01%) were detected. Our results indicated the existence of three genetic groups with limited gene exchange and revealed positive correlations (r = 0.425, P < 0.05) between genetic diversity and geo-graphic distance. The ecological niche modeling (ENM) results support the existence of three distribution zones during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), with high probability of occurrence (0.8–1.0), and indicated slight distribution disturbances during and after the LGM. The fundamental patterns of genetic diversity and population structuring of H. abyssinica result from a combination of both environmental and geographical factors, including long-term isolation by distance and characteristic life history of this species. Our ENM results identified three zones that could have served as glacial refugia for this species and lay a foundation for further studies, outlining demographic histories and population structures of Afromontane species.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Geoffrey Mwachala and Daniel Miyawa of the National Museums of Kenya for their support in fieldwork, Zhicheng Long for his assistance in data analysis, Cornelius Mulili for proofreading, and Paul Gugger for his valuable comments and suggestions that improved an earlier version of this manuscript. This research was funded by the Sino-Africa Joint Research Center (Nos. Y323771W07 and SAJC201322).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Aquatic Botany and Watershed Ecology, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Andrew W. Gichira, Zhi-Zhong Li, Josphat K. Saina, Guang-Wan Hu, Qing-Feng Wang & Jin-Ming Chen

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Andrew W. Gichira, Zhi-Zhong Li & Josphat K. Saina

  3. Sino-Africa Joint Research Center, Wuhan, China

    Andrew W. Gichira, Josphat K. Saina, Guang-Wan Hu, Robert W. Gituru, Qing-Feng Wang & Jin-Ming Chen

  4. Department of Botany, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, 62000-00200, Kenya

    Robert W. Gituru

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  1. Andrew W. Gichira
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Correspondence to Qing-Feng Wang or Jin-Ming Chen.

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Communicated by V. Decroocq

Data archiving declaration: The dataset of microsatellite loci used in this study is given in the Online Resource 1

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Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article:

Online Resource 1

Occurrence points of Hagenia abyssinica and microsatellite dataset used in this study. (XLSX 26.4 kb)

Online Resource 2

Supporting details of AMOVA, STRUCTURE and MIGRATE-n analyses. (DOCX 54.1 kb)

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Gichira, A.W., Li, ZZ., Saina, J.K. et al. Demographic history and population genetic structure of Hagenia abyssinica (Rosaceae), a tropical tree endemic to the Ethiopian highlands and eastern African mountains. Tree Genetics & Genomes 13, 72 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-017-1156-6

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