Abstract
Assessing population evolutionary potential has become a central tenet of conservation biology. Since adaptive responses require allelic variation at functional genes, consensus has grown that genetic variation at genes under selection is a better surrogate for adaptive evolutionary potential than neutral genetic diversity. Although consistent with prevailing theory, this argument lacks empirical support and ignores recent theoretical advances questioning the very concept of neutral genetic diversity. In this study, we quantified genome-wide responses of single nucleotide polymorphism loci linked to climatic factors over a strong latitudinal gradient in natural populations of the high Andean wetland plant, Carex gayana, and then assessed whether genetic variation of candidate climate-selected loci better predicted their genome-wide responses than genetic variation of non-candidate loci. Contrary to this expectation, genomic responses of climate-linked loci only related significantly to environmental variables and genetic diversity of non-candidate loci. The effects of genome-wide genetic diversity detected in this study may be a result of either the combined influence of small effect variants or neutral and demographic factors altering the adaptive evolutionary potential of C. gayana populations. Regardless of the processes involved, our results redeem genome-wide genetic diversity as a potentially useful indicator of population adaptive evolutionary potential.
Highlights
Assessing population evolutionary potential has become a central tenet of conservation biology
Using an original database of 1709 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyped for 158 specimens by Pfeiffer et al.[30], we identified candidate climate-selected loci from the WorldClim database based on redundancy analysis (RDA), a genotype-environment association method[31] linking genotypes at each locus to variables likely to exert selective pressures
Our results demonstrate that genome-wide genetic diversity was more informative in predicting C. gayana genomic responses of climate-linked loci than genetic variation at the loci used to measure this response
Summary
Assessing population evolutionary potential has become a central tenet of conservation biology. We quantified genome-wide responses of single nucleotide polymorphism loci linked to climatic factors over a strong latitudinal gradient in natural populations of the high Andean wetland plant, Carex gayana, and assessed whether genetic variation of candidate climateselected loci better predicted their genome-wide responses than genetic variation of non-candidate loci. Genome-wide genetic diversity could reflect adaptive processes and, as such, be a useful predictor of population adaptive potential We investigated this by analyzing the extent to which genomic responses of climate-linked loci relate to the genetic diversity of candidate climate-selected loci as well as genome-wide genetic diversity of non-candidate selected loci over a strong latitudinal gradient, using the high Andean wetland plant Carex gayana as a model. We demonstrate that genome-wide genetic diversity of non-candidate loci is a more powerful predictor of evolutionary responses of climate-linked loci in C. gayana than genetic diversity of the loci used to measure these responses
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