Global change poses significant and urgent challenges for biodiversity conservation. Species persistence under a rapidly changing environment ultimately depends on abilities to disperse to favourable habitats or adapt in situ by plastic or evolutionary mechanisms. Conservation strategies preserving endemism and adaptive potential are critical. This study aims to investigate the phylogeographic history of Victorian Alpine plants using high-density genetic markers. Multi-taxa genomic data was compared to determine common phylogeographic patterns and identify evolutionary processes shaping biodiversity. Spatial patterns of genetic structure were used to delineate evolutionary bioregions and refugia of high conservation value. Life-history traits have seldom been explicitly within a landscape genetic framework. Spatial isolation is a key component of genetic structure for sessile organisms. This study demonstrates that life-history traits are primary drivers of inter-population connectivity and genetic structure. Differences across taxa impacted on patterns of genetic structure on fine spatial scales, while common patterns were observed at broad scales regardless of life-history traits. These findings complement other Australian Alpine genetic studies indicate that flora and fauna in Victorian Alps share a common genetic structure and phylogeographic history driven by unique processes. The geomorphology of the Victorian Alps has clearly driven the evolutionary trajectories of the native flora and fauna. This approach could inform evidence based conservation policy. Previously undelineated cryptic species were revealed by this study—highlighting limitations of traditional taxonomy and the utility of new approaches. This project demonstrates how genomic technologies can characterise evolutionary processes at landscape scales, and detect important patterns in at-risk ecosystems. This data is related to the following publication: Bell, N., Griffin, P. C., Hoffmann, A. A., & Miller, A.D. (2018). Spatial patterns of genetic diversity among Australian alpine flora communities revealed by comparative phylogenomics. Journal of Biogeography, 45, 177–189. Published online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jbi.13120 (free access). DOI: 10.1111/jbi.13120

<p> The dataset aims at studying associations between mating system parameters and fitness in natural populations of trees. Fifty-eight open-pollinated progeny arrays were collected from trees in three populations. Progeny were planted in a reciprocal transplant trial. Fitness was measured by family establishment rates. We genotyped all trees and their progeny at eight microsatellite loci. Planting site had a strong effect on fitness, but seed provenance and seed provenance × planting site did not. Populations had comparable mating system parameters and were generally outcrossed, experienced low biparental inbreeding and high levels of multiple paternity. As predicted, seed families that had more multiple paternities also had higher fitness, and no fitness-inbreeding correlations were detected. Demonstrating that fitness was most affected by multiple paternities rather than inbreeding, we provide evidence supporting the constrained inbreeding hypothesis; i.e. that multiple paternity may impact on fitness over and above that of inbreeding, particularly for preferentially outcrossing trees at life stages beyond seed development. This dataset could potentially be reused for meta-analysis or review of effects of habitat fragmentation on plants (e.g. pollination, mating system, genetic diversity etc). Please contact owner prior to re-use. </p> <p>This is part of the authors' PhD at the University of Adelaide, supervised by Prof Andrew Lowe, Dr Mike Gardner and Dr Kym Ottewell. Main goals of the project were 1. Examine and quantify the impact of fragmentation and tree density on mating patterns, and how this may vary with pollinators of differing mobility 2. Determine the theoretical expectations and perform empirical tests of mating pattern-fitness relationships in trees 3. Explore the plant genetic resource management implications that arise from the observations in aims 1 and 2 </p>

Microsatellite genotype data for 3 eucalypt species. Data include progeny and adults from across a gradient of habitat fragmentation. These microsatellite data could be further used in additional analyses, e.g. genetic diversity. Samples collected from stands on eucalypts as follows: non-neighbouring adult trees had leaf and seeds collected. Leaf was used to genotype the adults. Seeds were germinated, tissue then collected, and the same microsatellites genotyped - i.e. open-pollinated progeny arrays. The dataset is possibly useful for meta-analysis or review of effects of habitat fragmentation on plants (e.g. mating system, genetic diversity etc).

We established a common garden experiment within a 238 ha restoration site owned and managed by the South Australian Water Corporation (SA Water), near the township of Clarendon (-35.0882°S, 138.6236°E). We grew ca. 1500 seedlings sourced from one local and two non-local provenances of <i>Eucalyptus leucoxylon</i> to test whether local provenancing was appropriate. The three provenances spanned an aridity gradient, with the local provenance sourced from the most mesic area and the distant from the most arid. We explored the effect of provenance on four fitness proxies after 15 months, including survival, above-ground height, susceptibility to insect herbivory, and pathogen related stress.

We generated a total of 2,313,977 16S archaeal raw reads across the 36 replicates (64,277 ± 23,335 SD per replicate). A total of 2,299,955 archaeal sequences (63,888 ± 23,473 SD per replicate) and 1,937 archaeal OTUs (54 ± 20 SD per replicate) remained for further analysis after quality filtering. The OTU data provide information on archaeal flux at an active restoration site at Mt Bold, a water catchment reserve of the Mt Lofty Ranges in South Australia, through a stagger of years and can be used accordingly.

We present a High-throughput eDNA dataset of fungi to track functional recovery in ecological restoration in the form of an OTU raw data matrix. We generated a total of 4,993,144 ITS fungal raw reads (118,884 ± 42,210 SD per replicate) across the 42 replicates. A total of 4,955,680 fungal sequences (117,430 ± 42,164 SD per replicate) remained for further analysis after quality filtering. The OTU data provide information on fungal flux at this restoration site through a stagger of years and can be used accordingly.

The authors analyzed a total of 3,002,411 quality-filtered bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences in the 48 technical replicates across 8 revegetation chronosequence sites, consisting of 3,316 OTUs. Nine bacterial phyla dominated this dataset, including Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Gemmatimonadetes, Planctomycetes, Proteobacteria and Verrucomicrobia.The OTU data provide information on bacterial flux at this restoration site through a stagger of years and can be used accordingly.