Estimating the genetic variation in tropical tree populations: heterozygosity or allele number ?

Abstract

Forests are essential for the maintenance of the environment. It is well known that tropical forests are rapidly being lost due to various human activities. About ten years ago little information was available concerning the amount of genetic variability in tropical forests. Nothing was known about the genetic structure of tropical tree populations in general. No molecular studies had been done about the tropical forests at that time, although the loss of genetic variability, which is raw material for adaptive evolution of organisms, in various tropical tree populations all over the world, was worrisome.The most obvious disruptions to tropical forests include 1) rapid decrease of forest area in many tropical regions such as South

Comparative study of AFLP and microsatellite variation in four Dipterocarp species from natural and artificial populations in Sarawak, Malaysia

“…Allele frequency is much more sensitive to population size change (Yamazaki, 2003). We examined rare allele frequencies in D. lanceolata using AFLP analysis, because sample sizes of the other species were small.…”

“…Genetic variation is a fundamental element of biodiversity and accumulates in a population during the evolutionary process of the species. However, studies on genetic variation have started only recently (Yamazaki, 2003), and there have been few studies on genetic variation in tropical rain forest trees. A high level of polymorphism in enzyme loci in a tropical rain forest was first reported by Gan et al (1977).…”