Local Scale Genetic Diversity and its Role in Coping with Changing Climate

Climate change is thought to alter the patterns of genetic diversity within species and populations. Yet, it is not well-understood how genetic diversity influences organism’s adaptation to changing climate. In this chapter, I explore how within-population genetic diversity may be affected by local environmental heterogeneity and to what extent this variation may promote adaption. I focus on mountain ecosystems since they are heterogeneous environments at a fine scale that offer a unique mosaic of highly localized environmental conditions. I start summarizing the drivers of genetic isolation at a local scale and the diversification and adaptation patterns that result from it. I continue discussing these processes in terms of populations\u27 reactions to changing conditions using my own long-term ecological genomic studies. This allows me to demonstrate that local-scale variation, in the long term, may offer safe places for species in a warming world due to their fine-scale topographic variability, which may provide suitable habitats within only a few meters of species’ current locations. Yet, such fine-scale habitat variability can also lead to locally genetically adapted populations, so that individuals and populations adapted to a narrow range of conditions may respond poorly to future environments