A comprehensive landscape genomics approach for seed sourcing strategies in landscapes under varying degrees of habitat disturbance

Abstract

As most ecosystems around the world are threatened by anthropogenic degradation and climate change, there is an increasing urgency to implement restoration strategies aiming at ensuring ecosystem self‐sustainability and resilience. An initial step towards that goal relies on selecting the most suitable seed sources for a successful revegetation, which can be extremely challenging in highly degraded landscapes. The most common seed sourcing strategy is to select local seeds because it is assumed that plants experience strong adaptations to their natal sites. An alternative strategy is the selection of climate‐adapted genotypes to future conditions. While considering future climatic projections is important to account for spatial shifts in climate to inform assisted gene flow and translocations, to restore highly degraded landscapes we need a comprehensive approach that first accounts for species adaptations to current at‐site environmental conditions. In this issue of Molecular Ecology Resources, Carvalho et al. present a novel landscape genomics framework to identify the most appropriate seed sourcing strategy for moderately and highly degraded sites by integrating genotype, phenotype and environmental data in a spatially explicit context for two native plant species with potential to help restore iron‐rich Amazonian savannas. This framework is amenable to be applicable and adapted to a broad range of restoration initiatives, as the dichotomy between focusing on the current or future climatic conditions should depend on the goals and environmental circumstances of each restoration site.

Editorial 2022

“…There was also an emphasis to improve de novo transcriptome assemblies (Freedman et al, 2021; Perspective by Hölzer, 2021) and genome assemblies for an arctic‐alpine plant (Nowak et al, 2021; Perspective by Pyhäjärvi, & Mattila, 2021) and vaquita (Morin et al, 2021; Perspective by Whibley, 2021). The journal also published articles highlighting novel advances for landscape genomics (Rico, 2021) and assessing genetic variability necessary to mitigate wildlife pandemics (Ghosh et al, 2021, Perspective by Azat, 2021). Metabarcoding was a prominent topic and several perspectives highlighted new molecular and computational advances in the field (Wagemaker et al, 2021; Perspective by Piñol, 2021; Andújar et al, 2021; Perspective by Graham et al, 2021; Hleap et al, 2021; Perspective by Bik, 2021).…”