Seminar: Climate fidelity, genetic variation, and evolutionary potential

Abstract:

Climate fidelity—the tendency of a species or population to track its climatic niche through time—is a major factor influencing both patterns of genetic variation in wild populations and their fate on a warming planet. In this talk I explore the biological and conservation implications of climate fidelity from three angles. First, I discuss the delimitation of species and evolutionarily significant units in "Western" Empidonax flycatchers, a species complex with controversial taxonomy and a distribution shaped by Pleistocene glacial cycles. Second, I deploy theory and simulations to understand how climate fidelity might drive cyclical contact between populations and influence processes of genetic divergence. Third, I discuss ways to detect climate fidelity with genomic data, and its potential use as a proxy for evolutionary potential in assessments of extinction risk. I conclude with some thoughts on the role of evolutionary thinking in conservation biology.

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