[PCA] Botanic gardens & conservation: How well does a botanical garden collection of a rare palm capture the genetic variation in a wild population?

[Patricia_DeAngelis at fws.gov]

Biological Conservation
Volume 143, Issue 5, May 2010, Pages 1110-1117 

How well does a botanical garden collection of a rare palm capture the 
genetic variation in a wild population? 

Sandra Namoffa, Chad E. Husbyb, Javier Francisco-Ortegac, a, Larry R. 
Noblickb, Carl E. Lewisa and M. Patrick Griffithb, , 
a Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables, FL, USA
b Montgomery Botanical Center, Coral Gables, FL, USA
c Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, 
Miami, FL, USA
Received 16 November 2009;  revised 26 January 2010;  accepted 2 February 
2010.  Available online 21 February 2010. 

Abstract
Conservation is increasingly central to the botanic garden mission. Living 
plant collections are important components of conservation. Critical 
evaluation of living conservation collections with population genetic 
analysis can directly inform ex situ conservation strategy. Here, we 
quantify the degree of genetic variation captured through a 
population-based collection protocol, and explore optimal sampling for ex 
situ conservation. An extensive living collection derived from one 
population of Leucothrinax morrisii (Arecaceae) provided a model system. 
We compared 58 specimens from the ex situ collection with 100 individuals 
from throughout the parent population via 6 ISSR loci. Random bootstrapped 
resamples of the data were made to model differently structured ex situ 
collections. Mean diversity (He) differed little between the collection 
(0.204) and the population (0.216), and genetic distance (D) was very 
close (0.036). Very few private alleles were found between the collection 
and the population. Allelic capture, as measured by percent of private 
alleles, was greater than 94%. Resampled collections of different sizes 
captured from 48% to 94% of alleles. Pairwise comparison of bootstrapped 
resamples suggests that increasing the representation of half-sibling 
groups does not significantly increase allele capture. Increase in allele 
capture with increasing sample size is greatest at low resample sizes, and 
showed diminishing returns as resample size increased. No appreciable 
increase in allele capture was gained through maintaining different 
half-sibling groups. These data inform sampling for ex situ conservation 
purposes, and recommend sample sizes of at least 15 individuals, with the 
upper limit based on resources.
Keywords: Arecaceae; Botanic garden; Ex situ conservation; Living 
collection; Leucothrinax; Thrinax
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