Genes move between plants through reproduction, in a process known as gene flow. There are various statistical methods for quantifying current spatial genetic structures of populations, and the recent development of highly polymorphic markers has made it possible to identify gene flow between individuals with high accuracy. Nonetheless, none of the previous methods provides satisfactory visual imaging of the continuously changing spatial genetic structure resulting from gene flow and reproduction. In this study, we developed visualization techniques for illustrating spatial genetic structures on commonly used spreadsheet files, for one specific case study. When combined with basic gene flow models over two generations, we can quantitatively assess the effects of ecological factors in reproduction on spatial genetic structures of offspring, together with visual illustrations. Consequently, for the specific population, we can easily recognize how spatial genetic structure is affected by the density of parents and distance distributions of pollen and seed dispersal, and that if the ratio of maternal adults succeeding in reproduction is small, then extensive pollen flow will be necessary in order to preserve the current genetic diversity.
