Uncovering genetic structures of natural Turkey oak populations to help develop effective climate change strategies for forestry

Lados, Botond Boldizsár és Nagy, László és Benke, Attila és Molnár, Csilla és Köbölkuti, Zoltán Attila és Borovics, Attila és Cseke, Klára (2024) Uncovering genetic structures of natural Turkey oak populations to help develop effective climate change strategies for forestry. In: 11TH HARDWOOD CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS : Sopron, Hungary, 30-31 May 2024. Hardwood conference proceedings . Soproni Egyetem Kiadó, Sopron, pp. 78-85. ISBN 9789633345184

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Absztrakt (kivonat)

Turkey oak (Quercus cerris L.) is a widespread species of the genus Quercus section Cerris, distributed from central and southeast Europe to Asia Minor. The species has long been known for its enormous phenotypic-genotypic variability and extreme adaptability. Throughout its vast distribution range, Turkey oak occupies countless ecological niches with very different site conditions. According to the last projections, climate change is putting high pressure on the natural forest tree populations to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions. Due to their high variability and adaptability, oaks have great potential in forestry climate adaptation efforts. This is particularly true for the Turkey oak. According to recent results of climate-based modelling of species’ future distribution, Turkey oak could be a winner of climate change in Central Europe, significantly increasing its distribution and abundance. As a result, its importance in forestry and the wood industry could significantly increase in the future. However, for effective adaptation strategies, it is necessary to collect detailed information on the ecological characteristics of the species, drought adaptation strategies, genic diversity and genetic structure of wild populations throughout its range. Furthermore, as this species has previously played only a marginal role in the wood industry, its growing importance would require more detailed information on its wood properties and alternative uses for its wood. In this study, we used our recently published referencemapped genome-wide SNP dataset to investigate the genetic diversity and population structure of eight natural Turkey oak populations from Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula. Based on the diversity indices, we found that the studied population carried a relatively high amount of genetic diversity. According to various clustering approaches (fastStructure, PCA and DAPC), the studied populations were divided into four genetically distinct groups, corresponding to two Balkan, one Hungarian and one ambiguous group. The genetic isolation of these groups was found to be statistically significant and further validated by Barrier analysis, which revealed significant gene flow barriers between clusters. According to our results, Balkan populations appear to be genetically more diverse and structured, and therefore, wild populations of this biogeographical region are promising for further studies of the species’ adaptation to climate change. In addition, the genetic consistency of the Hungarian populations may indicate common refugial origin. On the other hand, the outlier ambiguous group formed by one Hungarian population is probably a legacy of a historical long-distance human-assisted movement of reproductive material. In conclusion for practice, may be an important question for future studies whether strong genetic structuring of Turkey oak populations is also manifested at the phenotypic level, for instance in different stem quality and/or wood properties of genetic groups.

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