Immigration AND in situ glacial survival in the lowalpine Erinus aipinus?

Abstract

It was hypothesised that Erinus alpinus survived in south-west peripheral refugia during glaciation. Its present-day, mainly sub-alpine distribution is nearly continuous in a south-west to north-eastern direction along the Alps. Nevertheless, E. alpinus is also known from proposed glacial refugia in the northern Prealps. Twelve plants each from 22 populations covering the proposed postglacial immigration route from possible southern French refugia along the north-western edge of the Alps were collected, including several populations from northern alpine refugia. High genetic variation was detected by AFLP. but no variation was found in PCR-RFLP of cpDNA. Hence , interpretations were mainly based on AFLP data. Using cluster analyses, several Mantel tests and AMOVAs, three basic groups could be discriminated.