title: Climate relicts and their associated communities as natural ecology and evolution laboratories.
abstract: Climate relicts, marginal populations that have become isolated via climate-driven range shifts, preserve ecological and evolutionary histories that can span millennia. Studies point to climate relicts as 'natural laboratories' for investigating how long-term environmental change impacts species and populations. However, we propose that such research should be expanded to reveal how climate change affects 'interacting' species in ways that reshape community composition and evolution. Biotic interactions and their community and ecosystem effects are often genetically based and driven by associations with foundation species. We discuss evolution in climate relicts within the context of the emerging fields of community and ecosystem genetics, exploring the idea that foundation relicts are also natural community and ecosystem laboratories and windows to future landscapes.
authors.affiliation: The Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA. Electronic address: saw9@uiuc.edu.
authors.forename: Scott A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Woolbright
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA; Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Whitham
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA; Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA.
authors.forename: Catherine A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Gehring
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA; Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA.
authors.forename: Gerard J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Allan
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Bailey
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D063148:Plant Dispersal
keywords: climate relict; community and ecosystem genetics; community ecology and evolution; foundation species; natural laboratories; species interactions