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Testing Putative African Tropical Forest Refugia Using Chloroplast and Nuclear DNA Phylogeography

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Abstract

The location and definition of Pleistocene refugia for tropical forest assemblages remains controversial. Phylogeographic methods have been used successfully in temperate ecosystems to locate past forest refugia using genetic data that coincide with pollen core evidence, and in some cases provide the sole basis for their location. Here we present molecular phylogeographic data from nuclear and chloroplast loci for the forest tree Irvingia gabonensis, across the majority of its natural range, in Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabon. It is the first detailed phylogeographic study to posit the location of tropical forest refugia across this region of Africa. Using the same method of restriction fragment length polymorphism screening, 17 alleles were identified across five anonymous nuclear loci and two haplotypes at a single chloroplast locus. Analysis based on nuclear variation identified two genetically diverse, differentiated allelic clusters within the species range, one in southern Nigeria/western Cameroon and the other in southwestern Cameroon. Molecular data are consistent with a historical genetic contraction and bottleneck into these regions in the Pleistocene and/or Holocene, which has been followed by subsequent expansion. Both genetic refugia are located within areas previously suggested as forest refugia from biogeographic studies, supported by available pollen core data, and occur either side of the Sanaga River, a notable biogeographic divide for mammals (particularly primates). Other putative refugia in Gabon do not appear to have acted as genetic refugia for I. gabonensis, and Gabon was most likely recolonised from the SW Cameroon refugial source. In this study, nuclear loci were able to highlight significant phylogeographic structure across the range of a tropical African tree, whereas chloroplast analysis gave a much more limited picture. With the increased availability of sequence data for non-model species, the de novo development and further application of nuclear loci is strongly recommended for phylogeographic studies of plants.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Pete Hollingsworth, Jean Maley, Adrian Newton, Toby Pennington, Roger Leakey, Julia Wilson and Melvin Cannell and two anonymous reviewers for reviews of and constructive comments to the manuscript. The work was funded jointly by Natural Environment Research Council, Edinburgh Centre for Tropical Forests and the World Agroforestry Centre.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity, School of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Adelaide, North Terrace, South Australia, 5005, Australia

    Andrew J. Lowe & Eleanor Dormontt

  2. Department for Environment and Heritage, State Herbarium of South Australia, North Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia

    Andrew J. Lowe

  3. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK

    David Harris

  4. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), PO Box 30677, Nairobi, Kenya

    Ian K. Dawson

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  1. Andrew J. Lowe
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  2. David Harris
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  3. Eleanor Dormontt
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Correspondence to Andrew J. Lowe.

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Communicated by Christopher Dick

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Lowe, A.J., Harris, D., Dormontt, E. et al. Testing Putative African Tropical Forest Refugia Using Chloroplast and Nuclear DNA Phylogeography. Tropical Plant Biol. 3, 50–58 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12042-010-9045-2

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