Understanding and monitoring the consequences of human impacts on intraspecific variation

Intraspecific variation is a major component of biodiversity, yet it has received relatively little attention from governmental and nongovernmental organizations, especially with regard to conservation plans and the management of wild species. This omission is ill‐advised because phenotypic and gene...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolutionary applications 2017-02, Vol.10 (2), p.121-139
Main Authors: Mimura, Makiko, Yahara, Tetsukazu, Faith, Daniel P., Vázquez‐Domínguez, Ella, Colautti, Robert I., Araki, Hitoshi, Javadi, Firouzeh, Núñez‐Farfán, Juan, Mori, Akira S., Zhou, Shiliang, Hollingsworth, Peter M., Neaves, Linda E., Fukano, Yuya, Smith, Gideon F., Sato, Yo‐Ichiro, Tachida, Hidenori, Hendry, Andrew P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Biodiversity
Climate change
ecosystem function and services
Ecosystems
Endangered & extinct species
Environmental changes
functional variation
Gene expression
Genetic diversity
genetic variation
Land use
Management decisions
neutral variation
non‐neutral variation
Open access
Phenotypic variations
Population
Reviews and Syntheses
Species diversity
Trends
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Summary:Intraspecific variation is a major component of biodiversity, yet it has received relatively little attention from governmental and nongovernmental organizations, especially with regard to conservation plans and the management of wild species. This omission is ill‐advised because phenotypic and genetic variations within and among populations can have dramatic effects on ecological and evolutionary processes, including responses to environmental change, the maintenance of species diversity, and ecological stability and resilience. At the same time, environmental changes associated with many human activities, such as land use and climate change, have dramatic and often negative impacts on intraspecific variation. We argue for the need for local, regional, and global programs to monitor intraspecific genetic variation. We suggest that such monitoring should include two main strategies: (i) intensive monitoring of multiple types of genetic variation in selected species and (ii) broad‐brush modeling for representative species for predicting changes in variation as a function of changes in population size and range extent. Overall, we call for collaborative efforts to initiate the urgently needed monitoring of intraspecific variation.
ISSN:1752-4571
1752-4571
DOI:10.1111/eva.12436