Population genetic structure in three foundational grassland species: Implications for restoration in arches and canyonlands national parks

Background/Question/Methods

While discontinued decades ago, intensive livestock grazing has left several grassland sites across Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in a degraded state. These sites exhibit significantly lower taxonomic diversity and soil stability and higher abundance of annual exotic plants. A critical Park mandate is to restore biodiversity and ecosystem processes to areas that have been impacted by human activity, and a first step in this restoration is choosing site-appropriate plant materials. To that end, we are conducting population genetic analyses of three important restoration species––Indian ricegrass, smallflower globemallow, and sand dropseed––sampled across an elevation gradient spanning the Parks.

Results/Conclusions

Initial results demonstrate that Indian ricegrass, a self-fertilizing species, exhibits significant genetic structure at the sampled scale, while globemallow, an outcrosser, does not appear to be genetically differentiated at this scale. Ongoing analyses are exploring correlations between marker allele frequencies and elevation, a proxy for climate, in the three species. Ultimately, these genetic analyses will be used to guide restoration of the degraded sites with these three species, while explicitly considering the fact that selection regimes at the sites may change in the future.