XVI International Botanical Congess

Metapopulations of different sizes have been constituted to assess the role of artificial selection versus drift (AS vs D) or extinction-recolonization regime (ERR) in determining the relationship between neutral and non-neutral diversity. In the ASvsD experiment, metapopulations are submitted either to directional or diversifying selection. In the ERR experiment, there is either no extinction, or recolonization by a few migrants or by a large sample of individuals. Preliminary results show 1) a slight efficiency of directional selection for precocity, 2) a very strong selection against seed dormancy (not intentional), whose efficiency depend on population size, 3) no size-dependence in neutral diversity loss, 4) a repeatable increase in the frequency of three isozymic alleles (size-dependent).