Endangered but genetically stable—Erythrophleum fordii within Feng Shui woodlands in suburbanized villages

摘要

woodlands are naturally or artificially formed green areas in southern China. They are precious for maintaining ecosystem balance in modern semiurban environments. However, they are generally small and geographically isolated from each other, and the status of genetic diversity of the plant species within them has been almost neglected. Therefore, we studied the genetic diversity of the endangered in eight woodlands (a total of 1,061 individuals) in Guangzhou, a large city in southern China, using microsatellites. For comparison, one population with 33 individuals sampled in a nature reserve was also studied. Although our results indicate that significant demographic declines occurred historically in .  , such declines have not resulted in consistent reductions in genetic variation over generations in populations in the recent past, and the levels of genetic variation in these populations were higher than or comparable to the genetic variation of the population in the nature reserve. In addition, our parentage and paternity analyses indicated widespread and potential long‐distance pollen flow within one woodland, indicating the presence of an unbroken pollination network, which would at least partially alleviate the genetic erosion due to habitat fragmentation and the unequal gene contributions of .  parents to their progenies when favorable recruitment habitats are absent under most of the parent trees. Overall, our results suggest that .  in woodlands may not be driven to extinction in the near future. Nevertheless, uncontrolled fast urban development with a lack of awareness of woodlands will cause the local extinction of .  , which has already happened in some woodlands.