Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

In a recent issue of Frontiers (2004; 2: 89-97), Robert Wayne and Phillip Morin provide a great service by outlining exciting advances and applications of molecular techniques in conservation genetics. Without wishing to detract from their valuable article, I would like to highlight an especially important emerging area related to molecular conservation genetics that is likely to be of inter? est to Frontiers readers. Disciplines Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | Population Biology | Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Comments This article is from Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2 (2004): 234, doi: 10.2307/3868261. Posted with permission. Rights Copyright by the Ecological Society of America This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/eeob_ag_pubs/162 Molecular Conservation Genetics and Adaptation Author(s): Fredric J. Janzen Source: Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Vol. 2, No. 5 (Jun., 2004), p. 234 Published by: Wiley Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3868261 Accessed: 20-07-2016 20:10 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Wiley is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment This content downloaded from 129.186.176.217 on Wed, 20 Jul 2016 20:10:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WRITE BACK WRITE BACK WRITE BACK Molecular conservation genetics and adaptation In a recent issue of Frontiers (2004; 2: 89-97), Robert Wayne and Phillip Morin provide a great service by outlining exciting advances and appli? cations of molecular techniques in conservation genetics. Without wishing to detract from their valuable article, I would like to highlight an especially important emerging area related to molecular conservation genetics that is likely to be of inter? est to Frontiers readers. First, some brief background: adaptive processes in a microevolutionary context almost invariably require the trait(s) of interest to possess some level of additive genetic variance and be subject to natural or sexual selection. More formally, the cross-generational adaptive change (R) in a trait is roughly equivalent to the product of its heritability (h) and the selection differential (S), giving the breeder's equation: R = h2S. It turns out that conservation biolo? gists are primarily interested in such traits, as they underpin organismal fitness and local adaptation. While the empirical and statistical approa? ches for quantifying the forces of selection under natural conditions are well understood, the long-standing problem has been quantifying the genetic basis of key traits in nat? ural populations. This difficulty has been exacerbated by the long generation times, small sample sizes, and other factors related to many organ? isms of conservation interest, complicating proper breeding designs to estimate these quantitative genetic parameters. Thanks to recent theoretical ad? vances promulgated by Kermit Ritland, Michael Lynch, Tim Mousseau, and others, and empirical progress forged by the development of molecu? lar markers like the nuclear microsatellite loci mentioned by Wayne and Morin, ecological and conservation geneticists now have the tools to esti? mate quantitative genetic parameters in natural populations. Combined with research on the selective environment, biologists can use these quantitative genetic estimates to predict the microevolutionary response of the traits of interest under differing scenarios. How will the population of inter? est respond phenotypically if local climatic conditions warm by, say, two degrees Celsius? What will be the cross-generational impact if indi? viduals of a certain size are culled from the population, or if individuals with a given phenotypic distribution from another population are used to augment a focal population of con? servation interest? These questions Erratum In the April 2004 issue, the cen? tral cover image of Paragorgia and the image in Figure 4 (page 125) of the article by Roberts and Hirshfeld (Front Ecol Environ 2004; 3: 123-30) should have been credited as follows: Photo by Alberto Lindner, courtesy of NOAA Fisheries. provide merely a flavor of the poten? tial power that molecular techniques used in quantitative genetics provide to modern conservation biologists when integrated with studies of ecol? ogy, beyond the useful applications of molecular approaches already detailed by Wayne and Morin. Fredric J Janzen Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology Iowa State University, Ames, IA (fjanzen@iastate. edu) Did you enjoy this issue of Frcmtiersl Would colleagues and students find it a valuable resource? Does your library subscribe to Frontiersl Please consider recommending Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment to your library. Clip or copy the form below. Thank you for your support. X.-. 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