
(section Sabina) is a dioecious tree endemic to the western Mediterranean basin. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: This work was supported by the project MEDIATIC (PTDC/AAC-CLI/103361/2008) funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) from the Portuguese Government. Received: OctoAccepted: JanuPublished: February 12, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Teixeira et al. PLoS ONE 9(2):Įditor: Massimo Labra, University of Milano Bicocca, Italy The estimators of genetic diversity were higher in populations of Spain than in populations of Morocco pointing for a possible loss of genetic diversity during the spread of this species to Africa from Europe.Ĭitation: Teixeira H, Rodríguez-Echeverría S, Nabais C (2014) Genetic Diversity and Differentiation of Juniperus thurifera in Spain and Morocco as Determined by SSR. High values of within population genetic diversity were found, that accounted for 90% of the total genetic variance, while population structure was weak. thurifera using nuclear microsatellites supports the separation of Moroccan and Spanish populations into two genetically differentiated groups that correspond to the proposed subspecies africana and thurifera. Six nSSRs were polymorphic and subsequently used to assess the genetic diversity and structure of the studied populations. thurifera were assessed for genotyping this species. thurifera was examined and eleven nuclear microsatellites (nSSRs) developed for J. thurifera in populations from the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco and the phylogeographical relationships among these populations. We aimed at describing the intraspecific genetic diversity of J. The Strait of Gibraltar has acted as an efficient barrier against gene flow between African and European populations, which are considered different subspecies by some authors. It nowadays exhibits a disjunct distribution pattern, occurring in North Africa, Spain, France and the Italian Alps. is an important tree endemic to the western Mediterranean basin that it is able to grow in semi-arid climates.
