Ice ages leave genetic diversity 'hotspots' in Europe but not in Eastern North America.

After the last glacial cycle, temperate European trees migrated northward, experiencing genetic bottlenecks and founder effects, which left high haplotype endemism in southern populations and clines in genetic diversity northward. These patterns are thought to be ubiquitous across temperate forests, and are therefore used to anticipate the potential genetic consequences of future warming. We compared existing and new phylogeographic data sets (chloroplast DNA) from 14 woody taxa in Eastern North America (ENA) to data sets from 21 ecologically similar European species to test for common impacts of Quaternary climate swings on genetic diversity across diverse taxa and between continents. Unlike their European counterparts, ENA taxa do not share common southern centres of haplotype endemism and they generally maintain high genetic diversity even at their northern range limits. Differences between the genetic impacts of Quaternary climate cycles across continents suggest refined lessons for managing genetic diversity in today's warming world.