Introduction - Genetic Diversity in Establishing Plant Populations: Founder Number and Geometry - page 8

- expression of inbreeding depression and the purging thereof,
- origin and breeding of crops and cultivars,
- population genetics effects of corridors,
- establishment and persistence of populations on islands and island
chains,
- attenuated populations such as tropical rainforest trees,
- problems of small, low-density population persistence (e.g., Allee
effects), and
- empirical plant population genetics studies.
NEWGARDEN: a Tool to Investigate Genetic Diversity in
Establishing Plant Populations
For plant evolutionary biologists, it is time-consuming and expensive
to sample natural populations or establish experimental populations to
investigate these issues. Instead, they can model the effects of spatial
patterns of introduction on population growth and genetic diversity
trajectories to better understand some of the potential processes driving
evolution. Actual restoration experiments in which plants are introduced
in different geometrical confi gurations with subsequent monitoring are
likewise costly and perhaps risky for endangered material. Restoration
practitioners would benefi t from having some idea of whether certain spatial
introduction strategies are preferred over others in terms of population
growth rates and retention of genetic variation.
This topic and the included computer program (NEWGARDEN)
provide new tools for exploring such spationumeric founding effects
using computer simulations. Specifi cally, the topic and program provide
the following:
1. An easy-to-use computer program, NEWGARDEN, that allows an
exploration of the population genetics of establishing populations
founded under different conditions.
2. An overview of how the program works, and how it refl ects biological
realities.
3. A description of how to use the program.
4. A series of examples that show how to interpret the output and
demonstrate that altering the initial founding conditions or life history
characteristics of species can have profound effects on the resulting
population genetics of establishing populations.
5. Case studies for species endowed with different life history
characteristics, demonstrating how to determine best reintroduction
practices in terms of population genetic diversity retention and
population growth rate.