Common garden experiments to study local adaptation need to account for population structure
Abstract
1. Common garden experiments are precious to study adaptive phenomenon and adaptive potential, in that they allow to study local adaptation without the confounding effect of phenotypic plasticity. The QST − FST comparison framework, comparing genetic differentiation at the phenotypic and molecular level, is the usual way to test and measure whether local adaptation influences phenotypic divergence between populations. 2. Here, we highlight that the assumptions behind the expected equality QST = FST under neutrality correspond to a very simple model of population genetics. While the equality might, on average, be robust to violation of such assumptions, more complex population structure can generate strong evolutionary noise. 3. Synthesis. We highlight recent methodological developments aimed at overcoming this issue and at providing a more general framework to detect local adaptation, using less restrictive assumptions. We invite empiricists to look into these methods and theorists to continue developing even more general methods.
Citation
de Villemereuil , P , Gaggiotti , O E & Goudet , J 2020 , ' Common garden experiments to study local adaptation need to account for population structure ' , Journal of Ecology , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13528
Publication
Journal of Ecology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0022-0477Type
Journal item
Rights
Copyright © 2020 British Ecological Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13528.
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