Abstract

The cloud forest of the Andean Region contains a high biodiversity. Unfortunately, human land use has caused most of the forest to become fragmented, negatively impacting many species due to the reduction of and constant change within the local habitat. In Colombia, these fragmentation triggers can include agriculture, livestock, and corridors for tourism. Conservation strategies focusing on keystone species could have more impact and better results to recover ecosystem dynamics. The wax palm Ceroxylon quindiuense (C. quindiuense) is an endemic and keystone species in cloud forests with a distribution across the three cordilleras of Colombia. Despite its ecological, economic and social importance, most forests of C. quindiuense are endangered; the most severely affected residing in small isolated populations in Central Cordillera. Nevertheless, these populations seem to retain a high genetic diversity. Because of this, the goal of conservation strategies should focus on retaining genetic diversity instead of increasing it. Because it can take as long as 80 years for C. quindiuense to reach maturity, our approach entails the introduction of juveniles (around 30 years) with genetic profiles similar to wild populations in order to augment population size, connect isolated populations, and avoid outbreeding. We evaluated the genetic makeup of three neighboring ex situ collections of living palms and compared them with the genetic profile of three wild populations of Central Cordillera. Multivariate analysis was used to assess patterns of genetic similarity and assign individuals to infer genetic clusters between collections and wild populations. Expected heterozygosity (He) of ex situ collections was lower (0.56) than wild populations (0.63), and the percentage of private alleles was higher in the wild populations (25%) than ex situ collections (10%). Collections Milan and Botanic Garden show genetic similarity with the Cocora and La Linea populations while the Toche and Roso collections were the most genetically distinct among the ones studied. Our results are that conservation programs should consider each population as a different evolutionary unit and protect them as such.

中文翻译：

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从基石种到保护：哥伦比亚最大的野生种群和部分邻近的非原生境植物收藏中蜡棕榈Ceroxylon quindiuense的保护遗传学

摘要

安第斯地区的云雾森林拥有高度的生物多样性。不幸的是，由于当地栖息地的减少和不断变化，人类土地利用已使大部分森林变得支离破碎，对许多物种造成了负面影响。在哥伦比亚，这些分裂触发因素可能包括农业，畜牧业和旅游业走廊。重点保护重点物种的保护战略可能对恢复生态系统动态具有更大的影响和更好的结果。蜡棕榈Ceroxylon quindiuense（C. quindiuense）是云雾森林中的一种特有和基石物种，分布在哥伦比亚的三个山脉。尽管其具有生态，经济和社会重要性，但大多数昆达木森森林濒临灭绝 受影响最严重的地区是中部科迪勒拉的少数孤立居民。然而，这些种群似乎保留了很高的遗传多样性。因此，保护​​策略的目标应集中在保留遗传多样性而不是增加遗传多样性上。由于昆杜梭菌可能需要长达80年的时间才能成熟，因此我们的方法需要引入具有与野生种群相似的遗传特征的幼体（大约30年），以扩大种群规模，联系偏远种群并避免近亲繁殖。我们评估了三个邻近异地的遗传构成收集活棕榈树，并将它们与中部中部三个野生种群的遗传特征进行比较。多变量分析用于评估遗传相似性的模式，并分配个体以推断出种群与野生种群之间的遗传簇。异地采集的预期杂合度（He）比野生种群低（0.56）（0.63），野生种群中的私人等位基因百分比（25％）比异地更高收款（10％）。米兰和植物园的收藏与可可拉和拉利纳人的种群具有遗传相似性，而托奇和罗斯的收藏在遗传上最不相同。我们的结果是，保护计划应将每个种群视为一个不同的进化单位，并对其进行保护。