DOI: 10.5061/dryad.d48r5
title: Data from: Landscape genetic approaches to guide native plant restoration in the Mojave Desert

description: Restoring dryland ecosystems is a global challenge due to synergistic
 drivers of disturbance coupled with unpredictable environmental
 conditions. Dryland plant species have evolved complex life-history
 strategies to cope with fluctuating resources and climatic extremes.
 Although rarely quantified, local adaptation is likely widespread among
 these species and potentially influences restoration outcomes. The common
 practice of reintroducing propagules to restore dryland ecosystems, often
 across large spatial scales, compels evaluation of adaptive divergence
 within these species. Such evaluations are critical to understanding the
 consequences of large-scale manipulation of gene flow and to predicting
 success of restoration efforts. However, genetic information for species
 of interest can be difficult and expensive to obtain through traditional
 common garden experiments. Recent advances in landscape genetics offer
 marker-based approaches for identifying environmental drivers of adaptive
 genetic variability in non-model species, but tools are still needed to
 link these approaches with practical aspects of ecological restoration.
 Here, we combine spatially-explicit landscape genetics models with
 flexible visualization tools to demonstrate how cost-effective evaluations
 of adaptive genetic divergence can facilitate implementation of different
 seed sourcing strategies in ecological restoration. We apply these methods
 to Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) markers genotyped in two
 Mojave Desert shrub species of high restoration importance: the
 long-lived, wind-pollinated gymnosperm Ephedra nevadensis, and the
 short-lived, insect-pollinated angiosperm Sphaeralcea ambigua. Mean annual
 temperature was identified as an important driver of adaptive genetic
 divergence for both species. Ephedra showed stronger adaptive divergence
 with respect to precipitation variability, while temperature variability
 and precipitation averages explained a larger fraction of adaptive
 divergence in Sphaeralcea. We describe multivariate statistical approaches
 for interpolating spatial patterns of adaptive divergence while accounting
 for potential bias due to neutral genetic structure. Through a spatial
 bootstrapping procedure, we also visualize patterns in the magnitude of
 model uncertainty. Finally, we introduce an interactive, distance-based
 mapping approach that explicitly links marker-based models of adaptive
 divergence with local or admixture seed sourcing strategies, promoting
 effective native plant restoration.
description: Ephedra nevadensis AFLP
 dataEphedra nevadensis AFLPs
 in GenAlEx formatEphedra_nevadensis_AFLP.csvSphaeralcea ambigua AFLP dataSphaeralcea ambigua AFLPs in GenAlEx formatSphaeralcea_ambigua_AFLP.csvAdaptive and Environmental Distance ToolsToolset for guiding seed sourcing of native plants in restoration projects within the Mojave Desert. The zip file contains a tutorial, R script, and ArcGIS toolbox.DataS1.zipSeed transfer zonesSeed transfer zones for Ephedra nevadensis and Sphaeralcea ambigua, and provisional seed transfer zones for the Mojave Desert ecoregion. Raster files are provided in img format and projected in NAD 1983 / UTM zone 11N (EPSG: 26911).DataS2.zip