Environmental and geographic variables are effective surrogates for genetic variation in conservation planning.

ABSTRACT: Protected areas buffer species from anthropogenic threats and provide places for the processes that generate and maintain biodiversity to continue. However, genetic variation, the raw material for evolution, is difficult to capture in conservation planning, not least because genetic data require considerable resources to obtain and analyze. Here we show that freely available environmental and geographic distance variables can be highly effective surrogates in conservation planning for representing adaptive and neutral intraspecific genetic variation. We obtained occurrence and genetic data from the IntraBioDiv project for 27 plant species collected over the European Alps using a gridded sampling scheme. For each species, we identified loci that were potentially under selection using outlie

SUBMITTER: Hanson JO 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5715761 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature