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Climate-related adaptive genetic variation and population structure in natural stands of Norway spruce in the South-Eastern Alps

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Abstract

Forest trees dominate many Alpine landscapes that are currently exposed to changing climate. Norway spruce is one of the most important conifer species of the Italian Alps, and natural populations are found across steep environmental gradients with large differences in temperature and moisture availability. This study seeks to determine and quantify patterns of genetic diversity in natural populations toward understanding adaptive responses to changing climate. Across the Italian species range, 24 natural stands were sampled with a major focus on the Eastern Italian Alps. Sampled trees were genotyped for 384 selected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 285 genes. A wide array of potential candidate genes was tested for correlation with climatic parameters. To minimize false-positive association between genotype and climate, population structure was investigated. Pairwise F ST estimates between sampled populations ranged between 0.000 and 0.075, with the highest values involving the two disjoint populations, Valdieri, on the western Italian Alps, and Campolino, the most southern population on the Apennines. Despite considerable genetic admixture among populations, both Bayesian and multivariate approach identified four genetic clusters. Selection scans revealed five F ST outliers, and the environmental association analysis detected ten SNPs associated to one or more climatic variables. Overall, 13 potentially adaptive loci were identified, three of which have been reported in a previous study on the same species conducted on a broader geographical scale. In our study, precipitation, more than temperature, was often associated with genotype; therefore, it appears as the most important environmental variable associated with the high sensitivity of Norway spruce to soil water supply. These findings provide relevant information for understanding and quantifying climate change effects on this species and its ability to genetically adapt.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Alpine Ecosystems in a Changing Environment: Biodiversity Sensitivity and Adaptive Potential (ACE-SAP) project c/o the Edmund Mach Foundation–San Michele all’Adige (TN) and partially funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy), with the regulation No. 23, June 12, 2008, of the University and Scientific Research Service.

The authors would wish to thank Alessandro Mancabelli, soil expert at FEM, Marco Pietrogiovanna of the Forest Service of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, Raffaella Pettina of the Italian Forest Service, Paolo Camerano of IPLA-Turin, and Luca Bronzini and Maurizio Odasso of Panstudio Ass. A special thank to Antonella Agostini, Lucio Sottovia, Fabio Angeli, Giorgio Messina, Bruno Crosignani, Alessandro Wolinski, and Romano Masè of the Forest Services of the Provinces of Trento and Udine for their help in the sampling organization and David Blanco, Yuri Gori, Stefano Maffei, Marta Scalfi, and Daniele Sebastiani for their helpful support in sample collection. We would like to thank Randi Famula for DNA extraction and Ben Figueroa and Gabriel G. Rosa for bioinformatics support. A particular acknowledgment is for Jill L. Wegrzyn and John D. Liechty for their help in the genotyping design and data processing and Andrew J. Eckert for his comments on preliminary data analysis. We thank Luca Delucchi, Markus Metz, and Markus Neteler for providing GIS-derived climate data. The authors are also very thankful to the anonymous reviewers that provided important suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Data archiving statement

SNP sequence data is available at DRYAD digital repository with submission code doi:10.5061/dryad.n818s

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM), Via E. Mach 1, 38010 S. Michele all’Adige, Trento, Italy

    Erica A. Di Pierro, Elena Mosca, Duccio Rocchini, David B. Neale & Nicola La Porta

  2. Dipartimento di Biotecnologie e Scienze della Vita, Universita’ degli Studi dell’Insubria, Via J.H. Dunant 3, 21100, Varese, Italy

    Erica A. Di Pierro & Giorgio Binelli

  3. Dipartimento di Bioscienze, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Erica A. Di Pierro

  4. Department of Plant Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    David B. Neale

  5. MOUNTFOR Project Centre, European Forest Institute (EFI), Via E. Mach 1, San Michele a/Adige, Trento, Italy

    Nicola La Porta

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  1. Erica A. Di Pierro
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Correspondence to Nicola La Porta.

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Communicated by F. Gugerli

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Di Pierro, E.A., Mosca, E., Rocchini, D. et al. Climate-related adaptive genetic variation and population structure in natural stands of Norway spruce in the South-Eastern Alps. Tree Genetics & Genomes 12, 16 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-016-0972-4

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