Landscape genetics of Mexican biodiversity: A review

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Abstract

Abstract The rich biodiversity of Mexico is threatened due to habitat fragmentation and climate change. Landscape genetics provides an excellent framework that integrates genetic, geographic, and ecological landscape data to inform conservation strategies. To discuss the value of landscape genetics for the study of the Mexican biota, a literature review of landscape genetics studies in Mexico was conducted to highlight trends of taxonomic groups, habitats, and research objectives. A total of 20 studies were identified: 65% in plants and 35% in animals. A large proportion of studies focused on temperate ecosystems and tropical forests, whereas marine and urban environments were lacking. Detection of linear barriers and landscape features on gene flow were the most popular objectives, while two objectives were exclusive to plants: spatial adaptive variation and estimates of contemporary gene flow with parentage analyses to evaluate effects of habitat fragmentation. Potential areas of research for landscape genetics studies in Mexico and recommendations are discussed.

Translated abstract

Resumen La rica biodiversidad de México está amenazada por la fragmentación del hábitat y el cambio climático. La genética del paisaje ofrece un marco metodológico que integra datos genéticos, geográficos y ecológicos del paisaje para informar estrategias de conservación. Para discutir el valor de la genética del paisaje en el estudio de la biota mexicana, se desarrolló una revisión bibliográfica de estudios de genética del paisaje en México para identificar tendencias en grupos taxonómicos, hábitats y objetivos de investigación. Se identificaron 20 estudios: 65% en plantas y 35% en animales. Una alta proporción de estudios fue en ecosistemas templados y selvas tropicales, entretanto que los ambientes marinos y urbanos estuvieron ausentes. Los objetivos más comunes fueron la identificación de barreras y características del paisaje sobre el flujo genético, mientras que dos objetivos fueron exclusivos en plantas: variación adaptativa espacial y estimación contemporánea de flujo genético con análisis de parentesco para evaluar la fragmentación. Se sugieren áreas potenciales de investigación y recomendaciones para futuros estudios de genética del paisaje en México.

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New insights from fine-scale spatial genetic structure analyses in plant populations.

X Vekemans, O J Hardy (2004)

Many empirical studies have assessed fine-scale spatial genetic structure (SGS), i.e. the nonrandom spatial distribution of genotypes, within plant populations using genetic markers and spatial autocorrelation techniques. These studies mostly provided qualitative descriptions of SGS, rendering quantitative comparisons among studies difficult. The theory of isolation by distance can predict the pattern of SGS under limited gene dispersal, suggesting new approaches, based on the relationship between pairwise relatedness coefficients and the spatial distance between individuals, to quantify SGS and infer gene dispersal parameters. Here we review the theory underlying such methods and discuss issues about their application to plant populations, such as the choice of the relatedness statistics, the sampling scheme to adopt, the procedure to test SGS, and the interpretation of spatial autocorrelograms. We propose to quantify SGS by an 'Sp' statistic primarily dependent upon the rate of decrease of pairwise kinship coefficients between individuals with the logarithm of the distance in two dimensions. Under certain conditions, this statistic estimates the reciprocal of the neighbourhood size. Reanalysing data from, mostly, published studies, the Sp statistic was assessed for 47 plant species. It was found to be significantly related to the mating system (higher in selfing species) and to the life form (higher in herbs than trees), as well as to the population density (higher under low density). We discuss the necessity for comparing SGS with direct estimates of gene dispersal distances, and show how the approach presented can be extended to assess (i) the level of biparental inbreeding, and (ii) the kurtosis of the gene dispersal distribution.

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Future projections for Mexican faunas under global climate change scenarios.

A. Townsend Peterson, Miguel A. Ortega-Huerta, Jeremy W Bartley … (2002)

Global climates are changing rapidly, with unexpected consequences. Because elements of biodiversity respond intimately to climate as an important driving force of distributional limitation, distributional shifts and biodiversity losses are expected. Nevertheless, in spite of modelling efforts focused on single species or entire ecosystems, a few preliminary surveys of fauna-wide effects, and evidence of climate change-mediated shifts in several species, the likely effects of climate change on species' distributions remain little known, and fauna-wide or community-level effects are almost completely unexplored. Here, using a genetic algorithm and museum specimen occurrence data, we develop ecological niche models for 1,870 species occurring in Mexico and project them onto two climate surfaces modelled for 2055. Although extinctions and drastic range reductions are predicted to be relatively few, species turnover in some local communities is predicted to be high (>40% of species), suggesting that severe ecological perturbations may result.