Losing your edge: climate change and the conservation value of range-edge populations.

ABSTRACT: Populations occurring at species' range edges can be locally adapted to unique environmental conditions. From a species' perspective, range-edge environments generally have higher severity and frequency of extreme climatic events relative to the range core. Under future climates, extreme climatic events are predicted to become increasingly important in defining species' distributions. Therefore, range-edge genotypes that are better adapted to extreme climates relative to core populations may be essential to species' persistence during periods of rapid climate change. We use relatively simple conceptual models to highlight the importance of locally adapted range-edge populations (leading and trailing edges) for determining the ability of species to persist under future climates. Using trees

SUBMITTER: Rehm EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4667833 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature