TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kloss, Lena
A1  - Fischer, Markus
A1  - Durka, Walter
T1  - Land-use effects on genetic structure of a common grassland herb a matter of scale
JF  - Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft für Ökologie
N2  - The most common management practices in European grasslands are grazing by livestock and mowing for silage and hay. Grazing and mowing differ in their potential effects on plant gene flow and resulting population genetic structure. After assessing its breeding system, we investigated the effect of land use on the population genetic structure in the common grassland plant Veronica chamaedrys using 63 study populations on meadows, mown pastures and pastures in three regions in Germany, the so-called Biodiversity Exploratories. We determined plant density and analysed the genetic diversity, differentiation and small-scale genetic structure using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. The breeding system of V chamaedrys turned out as self-incompatible and outcrossing. Its genetic diversity did not differ among land-use types. This may be attributed to large population sizes and the strong dispersal ability of the species, which maintains genetically diverse populations not prone to genetic drift. Genetic differentiation among populations was low (overall F(ST) = 0.075) but significant among the three regions. Land use had only weak effects on population differentiation in only one region. However, land use affected small-scale genetic structure suggesting that gene flow within plots was more restricted on meadows than on mown and unmown pastures. Our study shows that land use influences genetic structure mainly at the small scale within populations, despite high gene flow.
KW  - Biodiversity exploratories
KW  - Mowing
KW  - Grazing
KW  - AFLP
KW  - Veronica
KW  - Breeding system
KW  - Pollination experiment
KW  - Pollen-ovule ratio
KW  - Isolation by distance
KW  - Spatial autocorrelation
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2011.06.001
SN  - 1439-1791
VL  - 12
IS  - 5
SP  - 440
EP  - 448
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Jena
ER  -