Data from: Divergent mechanisms of reduced growth performance in Betula ermanii saplings from high-altitude and low-latitude range edges

The reduced growth performance of individuals from range edges is a common
phenomenon in various taxa, and considered to be an evolutionary factor
that limits the species’ range. However, most studies did not distinguish
between two mechanisms that can lead to this reduction: genetic load and
adaptive selection to harsh conditions. This study investigated
the climatic and genetic factors underlying the growth performance of
Betula ermanii saplings transplanted from 11 populations including
high-altitude edge and low-latitude edge population using RAD-seq
analysis. For 11 B. ermanii populations in wide-latitude range of Japan,
we estimated gene diversity, nucleotide diversity, the coefficients of
linkage disequilibrium, genetic differentiation between populations,
population structure as well as the relatedness coefficient from SNPs. As
a result, the low-latitude edge population exhibited a high level of
linkage disequilibrium, low genetic diversity, a distinct genetic
composition from the other populations, and a high relatedness
coefficient. This data contains two SNPs datas (vcf files) used in these
analysis. We analyzed SNPs data separately for 8 planting sites. Then each
tarball contains 8 separate vcf files. One tarball named
"vcfAfterFiltering" contains vcf files after SNP filtering steps
used for the calculation of the coefficients of linkage disequilibrium.
Another tarball named "vcfAfterLDPruning" contains vcf files
after SNP filtering and before LD-based pruning used for the calculation
of other genetic parameters.