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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH, vol.136, no.5-6, pp.767-786, 2017 (SCI-Expanded)
The historical changes in European Black Pine population size across the whole natural distribution in Europe and Asia Minor were analyzed facing the Plio-Pleistocene climatic fluctuations. Thirteen chloroplast SSRs and SNPs markers have been studied under the assumptions of "neutral evolution." Populations and meta-populations had different histories of migration routes, and they were strongly affected by complex patterns of isolation, fragmentation, speciation, expansion (1.88-4.28 Ma), purification selection (2.09-21.41 Ma) and bottleneck (1.85-21.76 Ma). A significant number of populations (min. 29-41%) were in equilibrium for very long periods. Generally, the bottleneck revealed by chloroplast DNA is weaker than the bottleneck revealed by nuclear DNA. The N (e) immediately after the bottleneck reaches between 1820 and 3640 individuals. Generally, the historical effective population sizes shrink significantly for the Tertiary period from 10-15 up to 2.5 Ma in Western Europe (by 82%), followed by Asia Minor (69%) and the Balkan Peninsula (28%), likely resulting from important climatic changes. The rates and frequencies of stepwise westwards migration waves have been not sufficient to prevent isolation between the meta-populations and to suppress "sympatric speciation." The migration was weak for the Pliocene, but was maximal for the Pleistocene, and finally silent for the present interglacial period, namely the Holocene.