Potential for adaptive evolution at species range margins: contrasting interactions between red coral populations and their environment in a changing ocean.

ABSTRACT: Studying population-by-environment interactions (PEIs) at species range margins offers the opportunity to characterize the responses of populations facing an extreme regime of selection, as expected due to global change. Nevertheless, the importance of these marginal populations as putative reservoirs of adaptive genetic variation has scarcely been considered in conservation biology. This is particularly true in marine ecosystems for which the deep refugia hypothesis proposes that disturbed shallow and marginal populations of a given species can be replenished by mesophotic ones. This hypothesis therefore assumes that identical PEIs exist between populations, neglecting the potential for adaptation at species range margins. Here, we combine reciprocal transplant and common garden experimen

SUBMITTER: Ledoux JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4377262 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature