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Science 3 February 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5761, p. 628
DOI: 10.1126/science.1121543
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Brevia

Effective Seed Dispersal Across a Fragmented Landscape

Cecile F. E. Bacles,1,2 Andrew J. Lowe,2,3 Richard A. Ennos1*

The role of seed dispersal in maintaining genetic connectivity among forest fragments has largely been ignored because gene flow by pollen is expected to predominate. By using genealogical reconstruction, we investigated gene flow after establishment of seeds in a wind-pollinated, wind-dispersed tree. Our data show that seed dispersal is the main vector of gene flow among remnants and that long-distance dispersal is common across a chronically fragmented landscape. The relative importance of seed-mediated gene flow may have been underemphasized in other fragmented systems, and diagnosing the response of forest trees to current anthropogenic disturbances requires the assessment of phenomena after establishment.

1 School of Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK.
2 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Edinburgh, EH26 0QB, UK.
3 School of Integrative Biology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rennos{at}ed.ac.uk

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Simultaneous Evaluation of Paternal and Maternal Immigrant Gene Flow and the Implications for the Overall Genetic Composition of Pinus densiflora Dispersed Seeds.
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Long-Distance Dispersal of Plants.
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