An interdisciplinary approach to advancing landscape genetics

• Michael S. Rosenberg
• Bryan K. Epperson
• Andrew T. Storfer

Abstract
Landscape genetics is the intersection of landscape ecology with population genetics. While spatial analytical methods have been applied to genetic data for three decades, advances in high-throughput collection of genetic data combined with increased availability of GIS-based landscape data have outpaced advances in statistical methods. Classical population genetic measures (e.g., Fst and Nei’s D) are aspatial in nature and most often applied to allele frequencies from limited numbers of molecular markers. Today we are capable of generating hundreds of markers from distinct individuals (e.g., genome-wide SNP assays or AFLP loci). A distinct benefit of landscape genetics is that significantly more genetic variation can be explained by spatially-explicit analyses than traditional aspatial analyses. As such, landscape genetics holds great promise for ecological genetics research, such as explaining processes that affect the distribution of neutral or adaptive genetic variation, revealing cryptic barriers to dispersal, and developing conservation programs focused on landscape features that facilitate connectivity among populations. This working group will bring together landscape ecologists and spatial analysts with population geneticists to (1) examine the applicability of historic and currently used spatial tools for estimating spatial genetic structure with the various types of data generated in modern population genetics studies; (2) examine the statistical rigor of each combination of statistic and data type to test hypotheses about underlying spatial-temporal processes; (3) adapt existing and invent new methods for analyzing modern genomic data in a spatial context; and (4) develop forums for communicating with practicing ecological and evolutionary geneticists, landscape ecologists, spatial statisticians and conservation biologists.