Climate-associated genetic variation in Fagus sylvatica and potential responses to climate change in the French Alps
- 31 May 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Journal of Evolutionary Biology
- Vol. 33 (6), 783-796
- https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13610
Abstract
Local adaptation patterns have been found in many plants and animals, highlighting the genetic heterogeneity of species along their range of distribution. In the next decades, global warming is predicted to induce a change in the selective pressures that drive this adaptive variation, forcing a reshuffling of the underlying adaptive allele distributions. For species with low dispersion capacity and long generation time such as trees, the rapidity of the change could impede the migration of beneficial alleles and lower their capacity to track the changing environment. Identifying the main selective pressures driving the adaptive genetic variation is thus necessary when investigating species capacity to respond to global warming. In this study, we investigate the adaptive landscape of Fagus sylvatica along a gradient of populations in the French Alps. Using a double-digest restriction-site-associated DNA (ddRAD) sequencing approach, we identified 7,000 SNPs from 570 individuals across 36 different sites. A redundancy analysis (RDA)-derived method allowed us to identify several SNPs that were strongly associated with climatic gradients; moreover, we defined the primary selective gradients along the natural populations of F. sylvatica in the Alps. Strong effects of elevation and humidity, which contrast north-western and south-eastern site, were found and were believed to be important drivers of genetic adaptation. Finally, simulations of future genetic landscapes that used these findings allowed identifying populations at risk for F. sylvatica in the Alps, which could be helpful for future management plans.Keywords
Funding Information
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR‐15‐CE02‐0004)
- Ministère de l'Agriculture et de l'Alimentation (ECOFOR‐2014‐23)
This publication has 86 references indexed in Scilit:
- Potential for evolutionary responses to climate change – evidence from tree populationsGlobal Change Biology, 2013
- Changes in Body Weight and Psychotropic Drugs: A Systematic Synthesis of the LiteraturePLOS ONE, 2012
- Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversityEcology Letters, 2012
- Genetic consequences of climate change for northern plantsProceedings Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2012
- Climate change and evolutionary adaptationNature, 2011
- Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows–Wheeler transformBioinformatics, 2009
- adegenet: a R package for the multivariate analysis of genetic markersBioinformatics, 2008
- A rapid upward shift of a forest ecotone during 40 years of warming in the Green Mountains of VermontProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate ChangeAnnual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 2006
- A new scenario for the Quaternary history of European beech populations: palaeobotanical evidence and genetic consequencesNew Phytologist, 2006