Background: I have a very interesting dataset looking at spatial genetic relationships of a clonal plant species, but I am having problems resolving how to analyze it. This species has been shown to have fairly extensive clonal growth and individual clones can occupy fairly large areas (yes there is intermingling of clones too). Within each site I used a random stratified sampling procedure to locate 10-20 quadrats, from which I randomly selected 3 individual plants to genotype. The reason for taking this particular approach was I wanted to estimate the number of genetic individuals at the population level. Spatial autocorrelation analyses return fairly small patch sizes that seem to be influenced by the sampling protocol rather than the biology of the system. For example, I am getting patch sizes of population X of about 3 meters - but of the 45 plants sampled in 15 quadrats across the population - there are only 2 genotypes. The spatial distribution of these genotypes is obviously larger than 3 meters when looking at a map of the genotypes at the site.
Question: What is the best approach to estimating the number of genetic individual across a population (considering that I used multiple random samples within each quadrat) and how can I test for differences in the estimated number of genotypes across populations? Please send your suggestions to me ([email protected]) and I will post the suggestions if respondents request. Danny J. Gustafson, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Biology, The Citadel, Charleston, SC 29409 (843)953-7876 [email protected]
