Analysis of Selection and Genetic Drift in a Dioecious Plant Spatial Genetic Structure and Selection in Phenotypic Traits in a Young Island Population of Silene dioica

Selection and genetic drift are often competing forces in shaping genetic structure in populations. Genetic drift will often effectively cancel out the effect of selection when population sizes are small, such as in colonizing island populations. On a small island in the Skeppsvik Archipelago in northern Sweden, a newly founded population of Silene dioica has been monitored since it first established around 1993. Though inhabiting an area of merely 173 m 2 , the population has been shown to exhibit a genetically differentiated patch structure where closely related individuals are tightly grouped, distanced from other family groups. In this study, the effect of selection was evaluated as compared to that of genetic drift. Variation in phenotypic traits in flowers, leaves and stalks were compared to that of neutral markers, in the form of PST and FST measures, to assess a measure of what proportion of differentiation among patches in phenotypic traits could not be attributed to genetic drift. Males and females were analysed separately to obtain measures of sex specific selection. Signs of divergent and stabilizing selection were found in several traits in both males and females despite the small spatial scale and short time since colonization. Further analysis is needed to assess explanations for trait divergence among patches and direction of selection.