Abstract
Premise of research. Worldwide, fire-sensitive shrubs have an important but underresearched life history, and in Australia they are threatened by anthropogenic changes to fire regimes and habitat loss. Typically, adults are killed by fire, but they can also senesce and die if interfire intervals are prolonged. Populations can regenerate from seed banks displaying fire-stimulated germination; however, populations are ephemeral, and true population sizes and connectedness are difficult to estimate. Persoonia hirsuta ssp. evoluta is an endangered, inconspicuous, fire-sensitive shrub with a soil-stored seed bank currently known only from a small number of locations within the fire-prone Sydney Basin. Although it appears highly fragmented and populations are typically small, we predicted that its seed bank would buffer populations against loss of genetic diversity and population differentiation. Methodology. We used microsatellite markers to assess genetic variation within three