Quaternary climatic fluctuations have shaped the geographic distribution of lineages, potentially affecting the demography, genetic structure, and patterns of genetic diversity of extant species. Different phylogeographic scenarios have been proposed for plants in neotropical cloud forests during the Last Glacial Maximum based on paleoecological data: the dry refugia hypothesis (DRH) and the moist forest hypothesis. We specifically focus on the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (BAF) range of Cedrela fissilis (Meliaceae), sampling 410 specimens from 50 localities. Our study combines analyses of the genetic diversity, phylogeographic patterns, and past geographic distributions with a particular focus on highland populations. We identified 283 alleles across the 11 microsatellite loci, ranging from 18 to 33 alleles per locus, distributed across five genetic groups. Most populations of C. fissilis from the BAF exhibited a diffuse genetic structure, reflected in low pairwise FST values, which could be the consequence of high gene flow. In addition, the plastid data showed a connection between the western, southern, and eastern populations in the North‐East of Brazil, but no association between genetic data and elevation was observed. Habitat suitability projections over the past 140 000 years showed less fragmentation relative to the present, indicating a higher connectivity and gene flow. Our results provide support for both the moist forest as well as the DRH, suggesting that most likely, a mixture of these processes has acted through space and time.

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Ingressou no curso de Ciências Biológicas, modalidade bacharelado em março de 2008, na Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia em Cruz das Almas, vindo a graduar-se em fevereiro de 2012. Em março de 2012 ingressou no Programa de Pós-graduação em Botânica, área de concentração Sistemática Vegetal, da Universidade Federal de Viçosa e obteve o título de Magister Scientiae em fevereiro de 2014. Em março de 2014 iniciou o Doutorado no Programa de Pós-graduação em Genética e Melhoramento, área de concentração Genética Vegetal, na Universidade Federal de Viçosa. Submeteu-se aos exames finais para aprovação da tese em 28 de junho de 2018 obtendo o título de Doctor Scientiae em Genética e Melhoramento.