Performance and genetic variation of big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) in provenance and progeny trials in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico

Early results from genetic trials on the growth of Spanish cedar and its susceptibility to the shoot borer moth in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

“…Provenance designation was somewhat ambiguous, but collection locations were characterized by different annual rainfall and soil types and separated by 75-150 km distance ( Fig. 1) (Wightman et al, 2008).…”

Fifty years of genetic studies: what to make of the large amounts of variation found within populations?

“…In these sessile and long-lived organisms, the maintenance of adaptive genetic and phenotypic diversity within populations seems of paramount importance, because the environment is likely to change within their life span (Petit and Hampe 2006). Phenotype diversity has been recurrently reported in forest trees (Borghetti et al 1988;Cornelius 1994;Aitken et al 1996;Howe et al 2003;Wightman et al 2008;O'ReillyWapstra et al 2013); variability in life history traits (in particular, phenology) and adaptation to stress have consistently been a major subject in forestry. Such studies have typically focussed on variation at the regional or species range level, in relation to large-scale environmental (mostly climatic) gradients (Savolainen et al 2007;Alberto et al 2013).…”

Genetic variation for growth, morphological, and physiological traits in a wild population of the Neotropical shade­tolerant rainforest tree Sextonia rubra (Mez) van der Werff (Lauraceae)

“…On the other hand, forest management can only rely upon juvenile traits to provide guidelines for the selection of germplasm in afforestation programmes. Much effort is therefore devoted to the estimation of genetic parameters and of their stability in juvenile forest tree populations (for recently published examples, see Bundock et al (2008), Callister and Collins (2008), Ward et al (2008), Sotelo Montes et al (2007), Wightman et al (2007), and references therein). Assessment of the amount and distribution of quantitative genetic diversity is therefore an important goal both for ecological studies and for forest management.…”