Data from: Ecology and life history affect different aspects of the population structure of 27 high-alpine plants

A plant species' genetic population structure is the result of a complex combination of its life history, ecological preferences, position in the ecosystem, and historical factors. As a result, many different statistical methods exist that measure different aspects of species’ genetic structure. However, little is known about how these methods are interrelated and how they are related to a species’ ecology and life history. In this study, we used the IntraBioDiv AFLP-dataset from 27 high-alpine species to calculate eight genetic summary statistics that we jointly correlate to a set of six ecological and life-history traits. We found that there is a large amount of redundancy among the calculated summary statistics and that there is a significant association with the matrix of species traits. In a multivariate analysis, two main aspects of population structure were visible among the 27 species. The first aspect is related to the species’ dispersal capacities and the second is most likely related to the species’ postglacial recolonisation of the Alps. Furthermore, we found that some summary statistics, most importantly Mantel’s r and Jost’s D, show different behaviour than expected based on theory. We therefore advise caution in drawing too strong conclusions from these statistics.

植物物种的遗传种群结构，是其生活史、生态偏好、生态系统定位以及历史因素共同复杂作用的产物。鉴于此，学界已开发出多种可量化物种遗传结构不同维度的统计方法，但目前对这些方法间的内在关联，以及它们与物种生态学特征和生活史的关联机制仍知之甚少。本研究采用源自27种高阿尔卑斯物种的IntraBioDiv扩增片段长度多态性（AFLP）数据集，计算了8项遗传汇总统计量，并将其与一组共6项生态及生活史性状开展联合相关性分析。研究发现，所计算的各项汇总统计量间存在大量冗余，且与物种性状矩阵存在显著关联。在多变量分析中，27个物种的种群结构呈现出两大核心维度：第一维度与物种的扩散能力相关，第二维度则大概率关联于该物种冰期后对阿尔卑斯山的重新拓殖过程。此外，本研究还发现，部分汇总统计量——尤以Mantel相关系数（Mantel’s r）与Jost遗传分化指数（Jost’s D）为甚——其表现与理论预期存在偏差。据此，我们建议在基于此类统计量推导强结论时需谨慎行事。