title: Oceanic islands are not sinks of biodiversity in spore-producing plants.
abstract: Islands have traditionally been considered as migratory and evolutionary dead ends for two main reasons: island colonizers are typically assumed to lose their dispersal power, and continental back colonization has been regarded as unlikely because of niche preemption. The hypothesis that islands might actually represent dynamic refugia and migratory stepping stones for species that are effective dispersers, and in particular, for spore-producing plants, is formally tested here, using the archipelagos of the Azores, Canary Islands, and Madeira, as a model. Population genetic analyses based on nuclear microsatellite variation indicate that dispersal ability of the moss Platyhypnidium riparioides does not decrease in the island setting. The analyses further show that, unlike island populations, mainland (southwestern Europe and North Africa) populations underwent a severe bottleneck during the last glacial maximum (LGM). Our results thus refute the traditional view of islands as the end of the colonization road and point to a different perception of North Atlantic archipelagos as major sources of biodiversity for the postglacial recolonization of Europe by spore-producing plants.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Botanique, Université de Liège, B22 Sart Tilman, B-4000 Liège1, Belgium. vhutsemekers@ulg.ac.be
authors.forename: Virginie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Hutsemékers
authors.forename: Péter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Szövényi
authors.forename: A Jonathan
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.forename: Juana-María
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: González-Mancebo
authors.forename: Jesús
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Muñoz
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vanderpoorten
mesh_terms: D001266:Atlantic Islands; D044822:Biodiversity; D019068:Bryopsida / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D003710:Demography; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D046448:Ice Cover; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics; D008954:Models, Biological; D058974:Phylogeography; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011174:Portugal; D013030:Spain
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