Conserving adaptive variation: a new direction in conservation prioritization.

Henri A Thomassen, Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles, hathomassen@ucla.edu (Presenting)
Wolfgang Buermann, Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles, buermann@ucla.edu
Borja Mila, Biodiversidad y Biologia Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain, bmila@mncn.csic.es
Susan E Cameron, Graduate Group in Ecology, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, secameron@ucdavis.edu
Sassan Saatchi, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, saatchi@congo.jpl.nasa.gov
Catherine H Graham, Department of, Ecology and Evolution, State University of New, York, Stony Brook, NY, musaphaga@yahoo.com
John Pollinger, Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles, jpolling@ucla.edu
Robert K Wayne, Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles, rwayne@ucla.edu
Thomas B Smith, Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, University of California, Los Angeles, tbsmith@ucla.edu

The importance of conserving evolutionary processes is now generally acknowledged, but little attention has been paid to intraspecific variation and, particularly, the mechanisms that generate and sustain it. Nevertheless, in the face of climate change conservation of areas comprising high levels of adaptive variation is crucial to retain the potential for an evolutionary response to new environmental conditions. So far, a theoretical framework and the computational methods for how this might be accomplished have been lacking. Here we present such a framework, integrating recently developed modeling methods, describing the steps and the tools necessary for prioritizing areas for conservation based on adaptive variability. We exemplify our model in birds, frogs, and bats of the Ecuadorian tropical forests.



The framework that we propose consists of three major components:



1. Modeling species distribution- Spatially explicit modeling of species distributions has found rapid use in conservation biology. These niche modeling approaches evaluate habitat suitability based on species’ presence data in conjunction with a set of environmental layers describing biotic and abiotic factors.



2. Mapping adaptive variation across the landscape- A recently developed method, Generalized Dissimilarity Modeling (GDM), explains genetic and phenotypic variation across the landscape from a set of discrete sampling locations, and subsequently predicts those patterns into areas that have not been sampled. By incorporating both contemporary environment and measures of distance we are able to assess their relative importance in differentiating populations.



3. Assessing the degree of threat and opportunities for conservation- Assessing levels of threat have been a key ingredient of conservation prioritization for decades and the opportunity for effectively carrying out conservation also needs to be considered.



High percentages of genetic and phenotypic variation in our target species were explained by environment. Our results indicate the great potential of our proposed framework to include adaptive variation in conservation strategies.