Format: ORAL

David Gutirrez-Larruscain1, Pablo Vargas2, Mario Fernndez-Mazuecos3 Juli G. Pausas4

1 Desertification Research Centre (CIDE: CSIC-UV-GVA), Valencia, Spain. 2 Real Jardín Botánico (RJB: CSIC), Madrid, Spain. 3 Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Madrid, Spain.

The Mediterranean climate is know for its summer droughts, resulting in recurrent fires as the primary form of disturbance. With the onset of this climate, newly fire-prone ecosystems emerged, stimulating species diversification and triggering strong selection for traits that enable persistence in response to fire. One such adaptive trait is post-fire resprouting, facilitated by the belowground location of meristematic tissues. Juniperus oxycedrus, a gymnosperm species belonging to the cypress family and distributed across the western Mediterranean basin, is reported as the only species within Juniperus section Juniperus capable of resprouting after a fire. This study evaluated the resprouting capability of J. oxycedrus through the examination of 22 burned areas across the Iberian Peninsula. Surprisingly, individuals identified as J. oxycedrus subsp. badia were not able to resprout. Genotyping-by-Sequencing (GBS), a reduction-representation genome strategy, was employed on 11-12 individuals from each examined population. The objectives were to (1) evaluate the genetic diversity within each lineage and population, (2) examine gene flow levels between lineages and, (3) date the split of the J. oxycedrus resprouting lineage.