Is it possible to untangle the historical mosaic of human interference with the origin of forest plantations in Europe? This topic is relevant at the northern frontier of species expansion such as western Lithuania, where European beech was introduced by German foresters in the eighteenth century. Our aim was to identify the origin and assess the genetic diversity of the introduced European beech populations in Lithuania with the aid of DNA markers. We used 10 nuclear microsatellite loci to genotype 1260 European beech trees from the introduced populations in Lithuania and 18 natural reference populations from Germany, Sweden and Poland as the most likely sources of the introduction. We calculated common genetic diversity indexes and used several clustering approaches to investigate the genetic associations. There was a significant differentiation among the populations at all the loci ( D est = 0.07 to 0.24). The Bayesian clustering returned high likelihood for the Lithuanian European beech stands to originate from three distinct sources: (a) the Bavarian Alps, (b) north-eastern Poland, and (c) south-eastern Poland and the Carpathian Mountains. Despite the high allelic diversity, the Lithuanian European beech populations possessed a markedly lower observed heterozygosity than the natural populations. We assume that the seeds for the Lithuanian stands were collected over a geographically wide range (resulting in high allelic diversity), but at each spot, a few adjacent and likely related trees were sampled. A DNA-based tracking system could efficiently reveal historic transfers of forest reproduce material Europe and help to improve the adaptability of future forests.

中文翻译：

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基于 DNA 的林木历史引进追踪：立陶宛欧洲山毛榉 (Fagus sylvatica L.) 的案例

是否有可能解开人类干预欧洲森林种植园起源的历史马赛克？该主题与物种扩张的北部前沿相关，例如立陶宛西部，18 世纪德国林务员在那里引入了欧洲山毛榉。我们的目标是在 DNA 标记的帮助下确定立陶宛引入的欧洲山毛榉种群的起源并评估其遗传多样性。我们使用 10 个核微卫星位点对来自立陶宛引入种群的 1260 棵欧洲山毛榉树和来自德国、瑞典和波兰的 18 个自然参考种群进行基因分型，作为最可能的引入来源。我们计算了常见的遗传多样性指数，并使用了几种聚类方法来研究遗传关联。所有位点的种群之间都存在显着差异（D est = 0.07 至 0.24）。贝叶斯聚类分析表明立陶宛欧洲山毛榉林有很高的可能性来自三个不同的来源：(a) 巴伐利亚阿尔卑斯山，(b) 波兰东北部，以及 (c) 波兰东南部和喀尔巴阡山脉。尽管等位基因多样性很高，立陶宛欧洲山毛榉种群的观察杂合度明显低于自然种群。我们假设立陶宛林分的种子收集的地理范围很广（导致等位基因多样性高），但在每个地点，采样了一些相邻且可能相关的树木。