Allozymic variation in proteins encoded by 25 loci was analyzed electrophoretically in 1982 and 1983 in 356 individual plants from a dense population of wild barley, Hordeum spontaneum, the progenitor of cultivated barley. The test involved six microniches organized in a mosaic pattern in the open Tabor oak forest at Neve Ya'ar, Israel. The microniches were i) sun-soil, ii) sun-rock, iii) shade-soil, iv) shade-rock, and the contact zones: v) soil periphery of the sun-rock microniche, and vi) soil periphery of the shade-rock microniche. Discriminant analysis indicated significant multilocus allozymic differentiation between the microniches. Our results suggest that allozyme polymorphisms in wild barley are at least partly adaptive and differentiate predominately by microniche ecological selection, rather than by stochastic processes and/or neutrality of allozymic variants.
© 1986 The Society for the Study of Evolution.