Epigenetic Variation in Mangrove Plants Occurring in Contrasting Natural Environment

, a mangrove species, occurs in naturally contrasting habitats where it is subjected daily to salinity and nutrient variations leading to morphological differences. This work aims at unraveling how CpG-methylation variation is distributed among individuals from two nearby habitats, at a riverside (RS) or near a salt marsh (SM), with different environmental pressures and how this variation is correlated with the observed morphological variation.) methods that estimate population structure showed significantly greater differentiation among locations for epigenetic than genetic data. Co-Inertia analysis, exploring jointly the genetic and epigenetic data, showed that individuals with similar genetic profiles presented divergent epigenetic profiles that were characteristic of the population in a particular environment, suggesting that CpG-methylation changes may be associated with environmental heterogeneity. from salt marsh and riverside presented little genetic but abundant DNA methylation differentiation, suggesting that epigenetic variation in natural plant populations has an important role in helping individuals to cope with different environments