Seed sourcing in the genomics era: multispecies provenance delineation for current and future climates

Abstract

Restoration interventions require knowledge on the suitability of seed sources. Provenance delineation for ecological restoration of degraded environments has begun to incorporate genome‐wide information on adaptive variation, but this has only been completed on a small number of plant species. Rarely is provenance delineation using a genomics approach applied to species occurring across different habitats, and in the context of future climate scenarios, despite their potential importance for successful long‐term restoration. Here, we use neutral genetic data to investigate patterns of genetic differentiation and a landscape genomics approach to model putatively adaptive genetic variation under multiple climate scenarios for two species co‐occurring in a predominantly mesic environment, and two species co‐occurring in a semi‐arid environment. We then determine the genetic similarity of seed sourcing locations to hypothetical restoration sites, both under current and future climate scenarios. We found that the geographical extent of provenances and the amount of genetic change required to track the projected climatic conditions over time differed within the pairs of co‐occurring species, and between habitats. Additionally, future climate scenarios had differing effects on provenance patterns between the two landscapes indicating a differential response to changing climate between species from mesic and arid habitats. This implies that provenance guidelines can be both species and habitat dependent. We discuss how these results can be utilized to design seed sourcing strategies for successful restoration, and how these methods could be more broadly applied to delineate provenances of other species and locations.