title: A practical guide to measuring local adaptation.
abstract: Patterns of local adaptation are expected to emerge when selection is spatially heterogeneous and sufficiently strong relative to the action of other evolutionary forces. The observation of local adaptation thus provides important insight into evolutionary processes and the adaptive divergence of populations. The detection of local adaptation, however, suffers from several conceptual, statistical and methodological issues. Here, we provide practical recommendations regarding (1) the definition of local adaptation, (2) the analysis of transplant experiments and (3) the optimisation of the experimental design of local adaptation studies. Together, these recommendations provide a unified approach for measuring local adaptation and understanding the adaptive divergence of populations in a wide range of biological systems.
authors.affiliation: Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5175, 1919 route de Mende, 34293, Montpellier Cedex 5, France. francois.blanquart@normalesup.org
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Blanquart
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Kaltz
authors.forename: Scott L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Nuismer
authors.forename: Sylvain
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gandon
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology*; D005075:Biological Evolution; D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological
keywords: Experimental evolution; host-parasite coevolution; linear model; spatial heterogeneity; specialisation; statistics; transplant experiments