Abstract
Local adaptation is used as a criterion to select plant materials that will display high fitness in new environments. A large body of research has explored local adaptation in plants, however, to what extent findings can inform management decisions has not been formally evaluated. We assessed local adaptation literature for six key experimental methodologies that have the greatest effect on the application of research to selecting plant materials for natural resource management: experimental environment, response variables, maternal effects, intraspecific variation, selective agents, and spatial and temporal variability. We found that less than half of experiments used reciprocal transplants or natural field conditions, which are both informative for revegetation and restoration. Population growth rate was rarely (5%) assessed, and most studies measured only single generations (96%) and ran for less than a year. Emergence and establishment are limiting factors in successful revegetation and restoration, but the majority of studies measured later life‐history stages (66%). Additionally, most studies included limited replication at the population and habitat levels and tested response to single abiotic selective factors (66%). Local adaptation research should be cautiously applied to management; future research could use alternative methodologies to allow managers to directly apply findings.
Highlights
Local adaptation is the process by which resident genotypes exhibit higher fitness in their home environment compared with nonlocal genotypes due to divergent selection as a consequence of variation in environment (Kawecki and Ebert 2004)
Over the course of the 20th century, research on local adaptation has expanded from a primary focus on long-term evolutionary processes, such as speciation (Jordan 1905), to a broader set of issues including rapid evolutionary processes and responses to changing environmental conditions (Barrett et al 2008; Leger and Espeland 2010; Hoffmann and Sgro 2011)
Abstracts and keywords of each article to determine suitability for inclusion and excluded studies that did not focus on local adaptation in vascular plants (439 studies), had primary species of interest that were non-native invasive species (113 studies), used only molecular analysis (93 studies), focused on crop plant (s) (42 studies) or were not experimental
Summary
Local adaptation is the process by which resident genotypes exhibit higher fitness in their home environment compared with nonlocal genotypes due to divergent selection as a consequence of variation in environment (Kawecki and Ebert 2004). Scientists and managers are increasingly using results of local adaptation research (LAR) to inform complex management decisions (Hufford and Mazer 2003), such as assisted migration for climate change mitigation (Vitt et al 2010), and choice of native plant materials for revegetation and restoration (McKay et al 2005). Native plant material choices impact the viability and adaptive potential of restored populations (Williams 2001; Broadhurst et al 2006; Aavik et al 2012), as well as the feasibility of using locally collected seeds in large-scale restoration (Merritt and Dixon 2011). It is critical to understand the extent to which LAR can be broadly applied to land management
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