Plenary Presentation Australian Marine Sciences Association Annual Meeting 2023

Genetic variation fuels evolution. As ecological communities worldwide grapple with rapidly changing environmental conditions, an obvious goal for conservation is to find those communities with the greatest evolutionary resilience or adaptive potential. But how can spatial patterns of adaptive potential among co-distributed species be identified? In this talk, I will discuss how populations genomics can, in principle, help uncover the biogeography of adaptive diversity. I will also describe pervasive deficiencies in spatial data records that stymie this research agenda. Examples from our empirical population genomic studies of corals will be used to illustrate the importance of place. Finally, I will outline efforts from my research group and other international groups to identify habitat and environmental proxies for adaptive genetic diversity in corals that can yield maps suitable for conservation planning.

This presentation is kindly supported by Deakin Marine Research and Innovation Centre, Deakin University