Perspectives on the use of landscape genetics to detect genetic adaptive variation in the field.
Understanding the genetic basis of species adaptation in the context of global change poses one of the greatest challenges of this century. Although we have begun to understand the molecular basis of adaptation in those species for which whole genome sequences are available, the molecular basis of adaptation is still poorly understood for most non-model species. In this paper, we outline major challenges and future research directions for correlating environmental factors with molecular markers to identify adaptive genetic variation, and point to research gaps in the application of landscape genetics to real-world problems arising from global change, such as the ability of organisms to adapt over rapid time scales. High throughput sequencing generates vast quantities of molecular data to address the challenge of studying adaptive genetic variation in non-model species. Here, we suggest that improvements in the sampling design should consider spatial dependence among sampled individuals. Then, we describe available statistical approaches for integrating spatial dependence into landscape analyses of adaptive genetic variation.
Manel
Stéphanie
S
Laboratoire Population Environnement Développement, UMR 151 UP/IRD, Université de Provence, 13331 Marseille Cedex 03, France. stephanie.manel@ujf-grenoble.fr
Joost
Stéphane
S
Epperson
Bryan K
BK
Holderegger
Rolf
R
Storfer
Andrew
A
Rosenberg
Michael S
MS
Scribner
Kim T
KT
Bonin
Aurélie
A
Fortin
Marie-Josée
MJ
D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics*; D054458:Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Analysis; D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D023281:Genomics; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D015233:Models, Statistical; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide