Pollen dispersal was characterized within a population of the narrowly endemic perennial herb, Centaurea corymbosa, using exclusion-based and likelihood-based paternity analyses carried out on microsatellite data. Data were used to fit a model of pollen dispersal and to estimate the rates of pollen flow and mutation/genotyping error, by developing a new method. Selfing was rare (1.6%). Pollen dispersed isotropically around each flowering plant following a leptokurtic distribution, with 50% of mating pairs separated by less than 11 m, but 22% by more than 40 m. Estimates of pollen flow lacked precision (0-25%), partially because mutations and/or genotyping errors (0.03-1%) could also explain the occurrence of offspring without a compatible candidate father. However, the pollen pool that fertilized these offspring was little differentiated from the adults of the population whereas strongly differentiated from the other populations, suggesting that pollen flow rate among populations was low. Our results suggest that pollen dispersal is too extended to allow differentiation by local adaptation within a population. However, among populations, gene flow might be low enough for such processes to occur.

Pollen dispersai is a critical process that shapes genetic diversity in natural populations of plants. Estimating the pollen dispersal curve can provide insight into the evolutionary dynamics of populations and is essential background for making predictions about changes induced by perturbations. Specifically, we would like to know whether the dispersal curve is exponential, thin-tailed (decreasing faster than exponential), or fat-tailed (decreasing slower than the exponential). In the latter case, rare events of long-distance dispersal will be much more likely. Here we generalize the previously developed TWOGENER method, assuming that the pollen dispersal curve belongs to particular one-or two-parameter families of dispersal curves and estimating simultaneously the parameters of the dispersal curve and the effective density of reproducing individuals in the population. We tested this method on simulated data, using an exponential power distribution, under thin-tailed, exponential and fat-tailed conditions. We find that even if our estimates show some bias and large mean squared error (MSE), we are able to estimate correctly the general trend of the curve • thin-tailed or fat-tailed • and the effective density. Moreover, the mean distance of dispersal can be correctly estimated with low bias and MSE, even if another family of dispersal curve is used for the estimation. Finally, we consider three case studies based on forest tree species. We find that dispersal is fat-tailed in all cases, and that the effective density estimated by our model is below the measured density in two of the cases. This latter result may reflect the difficulty of estimating two parameters, or it may be a biological consequence of variance in reproductive success of males in the population. Both the simulated and empirical findings demonstrate the strong potential of TWOGENER for evaluating the shape of the dispersal curve and the effective density of the population (d^).

Although they represent powerful genetic markers in many fields of biology, microsatellites have been isolated in few fungal species. The aim of this study was to assess whether obtaining microsatellite markers with an acceptable level of polymorphism is generally harder from fungi than in other organisms. We therefore surveyed the number, nature and polymorphism level of published microsatellite markers in fungi from the literature and from our own data on seventeen fungal microsatellite-enriched libraries, and in five other phylogroups (angiosperms, insects, fishes, birds and mammals). Fungal microsatellites indeed appeared both harder to isolate and to exhibit lower polymorphism than in other organisms. This appeared to be due, at least in part, to genomic specificities, such as scarcity and shortness of fungal microsatellite loci. A correlation was observed between mean repeat number and mean allele number in the published fungal microsatellite loci. The cross-species transferability of fungal microsatellites also appeared lower than in other phylogroups. However, microsatellites have been useful in some fungal species. Thus, the considerable advantages of these markers make their development worthwhile, and this study provides some guidelines for their isolation.