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Seagrass meadows are among the most important coastal ecosystems, in terms ofboth spatial extent and ecosystem services, but they are also decliningworldwide. Understanding the drivers of seagrass meadow dynamics is essentialfor designing sound management, conservation, and restoration strategies.However, the poor knowledge of the effect of clonality on the populationgenetics of natural populations severely limits our understanding of thedynamics and connectivity of meadows. Recent modelling approaches havedescribed the expected distributions of genotypic and genetic descriptors underincreasing clonal rates. Here, in light of these recent theoreticaldevelopments, we revisited population genetic data for 165 meadows of fourseagrass species. Contrasting shoot life span and rhizome turnover led to theprediction that the influence of asexual reproduction will increase along agradient from Zostera noltii to Zostera marina, Cymodocea nodosa and Posidoniaoceanica, which should be reflected by an increasing departure fromHardy-Weinberg equilibrium (Fis) and decreasing genotypic diversity (R). Thismeta-analysis provides a nested validation of this hypothesis at both thespecies and meadow scales through a significant relationship between Fis and Rwithin each species. By empirically demonstrating the theoretical expectationsderived from recent modelling approaches, this work calls for the use ofHardy-Weinberg equilibrium (Fis) rather than the strongly sampling-sensitivegenotypic index R to assess the importance of clonal reproduction, at leastwhen the impact of selfing on Fis can be neglected. The results also emphasizethe need to revise our appraisal of the extent of clonality and its influenceon the dynamics, connectivity and evolutionary trajectory of partial asexualsin general, including in seagrass meadows, to develop the most accuratemanagement strategies.

New insights into the population genetics of partially clonal organisms: when seagrass data meet theoretical expectations