Methods using genomic information to forecast potential population maladaptation to climate change or new environments are becoming increasingly common, yet the lack of model validation poses serious hurdles toward their incorporation into management and policy. Here, we compare the validation of maladaptation estimates derived from two methods—Gradient Forests (GF offset ) and the risk of non‐adaptedness (RONA)—using exome ca...

With the genetic health of many plant and animal populations deteriorating due to climate change outpacing adaptation, interventions, such as assisted gene flow (AGF), may provide genetic variation necessary for populations to adapt to climate change. We ran genetic simulations to mimic different AGF scenarios in large populations and measured their outcomes on population‐level fitness to determine circumstances in which it is...

Genome scans can potentially identify genetic loci involved in evolutionary processes such as local adaptation and gene flow. Here, we show that recombination rate variation across a neutrally evolving genome gives rise to mixed sampling distributions of mean F ST ( ), a common population genetic summary statistic. In particular, we show that in regions of low recombination the distribution of estimates has more variance and a...

High rates of dispersal can breakdown coadapted gene complexes. However, concentrated genomic architecture (i.e., genomic islands of divergence) can suppress recombination to allow evolution of local adaptations despite high gene flow. Pacific lamprey ( Entosphenus tridentatus ) is a highly dispersive anadromous fish. Observed trait diversity and evidence for genetic basis of traits suggests it may be locally adapted. We addre...

Background selection is a process whereby recurrent deleterious mutations cause a decrease in the effective population size and genetic diversity at linked loci. Several authors have suggested that variation in the intensity of background selection could cause variation in F ST across the genome, which could confound signals of local adaptation in genome scans. We performed realistic simulations of DNA sequences, using recombi...

This study used existing western brook lamprey Lampetra richardsoni age information to fit three different growth models ( i.e. von Bertalanffy, Gompertz and logistic) with and without error in age estimates. Among these growth models, there was greater support for the logistic and Gompertz models than the von Bertalanffy model, regardless of ageing error assumptions. The von Bertalanffy model, however, appeared to fit the dat...

F ST (as well as related measures such as G ST ) has long been used both as a measure of the relative amount of genetic variation between populations and as an indicator of the amount of gene flow among populations. Unfortunately, F ST and its clones are also sensitive to mutation, particularly when the mutation rate per locus is greater than the migration rate among populations. Relatively high mutation rates cause estimates...

Although genome scans have become a popular approach towards understanding the genetic basis of local adaptation, the field still does not have a firm grasp on how sampling design and demographic history affect the performance of genome scans on complex landscapes. To explore these issues, we compared 20 different sampling designs in equilibrium (i.e. island model and isolation by distance) and nonequilibrium (i.e. range expan...

F ST outlier tests are a potentially powerful way to detect genetic loci under spatially divergent selection. Unfortunately, the extent to which these tests are robust to nonequilibrium demographic histories has been understudied. We developed a landscape genetics simulator to test the effects of isolation by distance ( IBD ) and range expansion on F ST outlier methods. We evaluated the two most commonly used methods for the i...

Aim The increased incidence of large fires around much of the world in recent decades raises questions about human and non‐human drivers of fire and the likelihood of increased fire activity in the future. The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual framework for examining where human‐set fires and feedbacks are likely to be most pronounced in temperate forests world‐wide and to establish and test a methodology for ev...

The genetic differentiation among populations is affected by mutation as well as by migration, drift and selection. For loci with high mutation rates, such as microsatellites, the amount of mutation can influence the values of indices of differentiation such as G ST and F ST . For many purposes, this effect is undesirable, and as a result, new indices such as and D have been proposed to measure population differentiation. This...

The rapid accumulation of genomic data has led to an explosion of studies searching for signals of past selection left within DNA sequences. Yet the majority of theoretical studies investigating the traces of selection have assumed a simple form of selection, without interactions among selectively fixed sites. Fitness interactions—‘epistasis’—are commonplace, however, and take on a myriad of forms ( Whitlock et al. 1995 ; Segr...

Q ST is a commonly used metric of the degree of genetic differentiation among populations displayed by quantitative traits. Typically, Q ST is compared to F ST measured on putatively neutral loci; if Q ST = F ST , this is taken as evidence of spatially heterogeneous and diversifying selection. This paper reviews the uses, assumptions and statistics of Q ST and F ST comparisons. Unfortunately, Q ST / F ST comparisons are statis...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been used to study molecular ecology and phylogeography for 25 years. Much important information has been gained in this way, but it is time to reflect on the biology of the mitochondrion itself and consider opportunities for evolutionary studies of the organelle itself and its ecology, biochemistry and physiology. This review has four sections. First, we review aspects of the natural history of m...

We developed the landscape age‐class demographics simulator ( LADS) to model historical variability in the amount of old‐growth and late‐successional forest in the Oregon Coast Range over the past 3,000 years. The model simulated temporal and spatial patterns of forest fires along with the resulting fluctuations in the distribution of forest age classes across the landscape. Parameters describing historical fire regimes were d...