Article Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Alnus cremastogyne as Revealed by Microsatellite Markers Hong-Ying Guo 1,2,3,4, Ze-Liang Wang 2,4, Zhen Huang 1,2,3,4, Zhi Chen 4, Han-Bo Yang 4 and Xiang-Yang Kang 1,2,3,4,* 1 Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Tree Breeding by Molecular Design, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China;
[email protected] (H.-Y.G.);
[email protected] (Z.H.) 2 National Engineering Laboratory for Tree Breeding, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China;
[email protected] 3 Beijing Laboratory of Urban and Rural Ecological Environment, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China 4 Sichuan Academy of Forestry, Chengdu 610081, Sichuan, China;
[email protected] (Z.C.);
[email protected] (H.-B.Y.) * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-10-62336168 Received: 7 February 2019; Accepted: 18 March 2019; Published: 21 March 2019 Abstract: Alnus cremastogyne Burk. is a nonleguminous, nitrogen-fixing tree species. It is also the most important endemic species of Alnus Mill. in China, possessing important ecological functions. This study investigated population genetic variation in A. cremastogyne using 175 trees sampled from 14 populations native to Sichuan Province with 25 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Our analysis showed that A. cremastogyne has an average of 5.83 alleles, 3.37 effective alleles, an expected heterozygosity of 0.63, and an observed heterozygosity of 0.739, indicating a relatively high level of genetic diversity. The A. cremastogyne populations in Liangshan Prefecture (Meigu, Mianning) showed the highest level of genetic diversity, whereas the Yanting population had the lowest.