Evaluating surrogates of genetic diversity for conservation planning

Abstract

Protected-area systems should conserve intraspecific genetic diversity. Because genetic data require resources to obtain, several approaches have been proposed for generating plans for protected-area systems (prioritizations) when genetic data are not available. Yet such surrogate-based approaches remain poorly tested. We evaluated the effectiveness of potential surrogate-based approaches based on microsatellite genetic data collected across the Iberian Peninsula for 7 amphibian and 3 reptilian species. Long-term environmental suitability did not effectively represent sites containing high genetic diversity (allelic richness). Prioritizations based on long-term environmental suitability had similar performance to random prioritizations. Geographic distances and resistance distances based on contemporary environmental suitability were not always effective surrogates for identification of combinations of sites that contain individuals with different genetic compositions. Our results demonstrate that population genetic data based on commonly used neutral markers can inform prioritizations, and we could not find an adequate substitute. Conservation planners need to weigh the potential benefits of genetic data against their acquisition costs.

Incorporating evolutionary and threat processes into crop wild relatives conservation

“…Given that high-resolution genetic data for all taxa will not be available soon, we propose to use proxies of genetic differentiation as a spatially explicit surrogate of the potential genetic differentiation within the distribution of a given taxon, which can represent different populations across landscapes. Studies that considered genetic variation for spatial analysis of systematic conservation planning are extremely rare 40 , 41 . In the context of CWR conservation, Parra-Quijano et al 42 , 43 introduced an ecogeographic land characterization that assumes that adaptive genetic features vary according to environmental variation.…”

“…The passive accumulation of genomic divergence among populations can also lead to speciation, by processes other than natural selection alone 46 . Although isolation by distance is a common pattern, distance alone tends to not be a good surrogate for representing broad-scale genetic diversity, because it has the potential to miss genetically distinct groups of populations 41 . Therefore, population structure should be accounted for when targeting to represent, conserve and monitor genetic variation 9 .…”

Weaving place‐based knowledge for culturally significant species in the age of genomics: Looking to the past to navigate the future

“…Further, with a PacBio reference genome underway and overseas efforts to sequence the American lobster ( Homarus americanus ) genome, we anticipate future opportunities to explore signatures of local adaptation that incorporate transcriptomic, phenotypic, and experimental data. In the interim, the “holistic” nature of ordination analyses provide a useful starting point for understanding local adaptation in kōura (Capblancq et al, 2018; Steane et al, 2014) that can be combined with place‐based knowledge to inform management, for example, by identifying populations with distinct adaptive variation (e.g., Figure 7; Barbosa et al, 2018) and by prioritizing source populations for translocation that share similar historical water flow regimes to recipient sites (Hanson et al, 2020).…”

Low effective population size in the genetically bottlenecked Australian sea lion is insufficient to maintain genetic variation

“…In particular, individually based, spatially explicit eco‐evolutionary models make use of data from a range disciplines that traditionally worked in isolation, and broaden the scope of their application to conservation (Armansin, Stow, Cantor et al., 2020; Schumaker and Brookes, 2018). These developments are timely given the limited resources available for conservation (Frankham et al., 2010; Robinson et al., 2020) and the poor performance of surrogates of genetic diversity (Hanson, Veríssimo, Velo‐Antón et al., 2020).…”