Indigenous populations of Scots pine are now limited to north-west and central Scotland on the British Isles. However, palaeoecological evidence suggests that Scots pine was much more widely distributed in the past. According to fossil pollen and other plant macrofossil evidence, the species entered south-east England at least 10,000 years ago and expanded across Britain to west Ireland and north Scotland. Approximately 4000 years ago, a widespread decline was observed in pollen frequencies of Scots pine and indigenous populations have become limited to their current localities as a result. The aim of this thesis was to carry out a population genetic analysis of 2 ancient populations of Scots pine using chloroplast microsatellite regions amplified from fossil pollen grains preserved in lake sediment from County Donegal, west Ireland and Loch Maree, west Scotland. Previous ancient DNA analyses have utilised sequencing, but one of the aims of the present study was to develop multiplex chloroplast microsatellite assays for high-resolution genotyping of single pollen grains, in the hope that this method will yield more information than previous attempts using sequencing. A comparative study on 7 extant populations from Scotland was also carried out.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:706301 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Crossen, Kathleen |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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