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Data from: Landscape genomics and a common garden trial reveal adaptive differentiation to temperature across Europe in the tree species Alnus glutinosa

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Apr 28, 2014 version files 7.06 MB

Abstract

The adaptive potential of tree species to cope with climate change has important ecological and economic implications. Many temperate tree species experience a wide range of environmental conditions, suggesting high adaptability to new environmental conditions. We investigated adaptation to regional climate in the drought-sensitive tree species Alnus glutinosa (Black alder), using a complementary approach that integrates genomic, phenotypic and landscape data. A total of 24 European populations were studied in a common garden and through landscape genomic approaches. Genotyping-By-Sequencing was used to identify SNPs across the genome, resulting in 1990 SNPs. Although a relatively low percentage of putative adaptive SNPs was detected (2.86% outlier SNPs), we observed clear associations among outlier allele frequencies, temperature, and plant traits. In line with the typical drought avoiding nature of A. glutinosa, leaf size varied according to a temperature gradient and significant associations with multiple outlier loci were observed, corroborating the ecological relevance of the observed outlier SNPs. Moreover, the lack of isolation-by-distance, the very low genetic differentiation among populations and the high intra-population genetic variation all support the notion that high gene exchange combined with strong environmental selection promotes adaptation to environmental cues.