Canadian Forest Service Publications
Finding common ground: Toward comparable indicators of adaptive capacity of tree species to a changing climate. 2021. Royer-Tardif, S., Boisvert-Marsh, L., Godbout, J., Isabel, N., & Aubin, I. (2021). Ecology and Evolution, 11, 13081–13100. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8024
Year: 2021
Issued by: Great Lakes Forestry Centre
Catalog ID: 40842
Language: English
Availability: PDF (download)
Available from the Journal's Web site. †
DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8024
† This site may require a fee
Plain Language Summary
Adaptive capacity is one of three components that characterize species vulnerability to climate change and is important to evaluate species' potential to cope with novel environmental conditions and persist in place. However, few studies have been conducted in such a way that adaptive capacity is comparable across multiple species at once. In this review, we propose a framework to evaluate adaptive capacity among tree species based on five components - individual adaptation, population phenotypic diversity, genetic exchange within populations, genetic exchange between populations and genetic exchange between species. We developed a quantitative index for 26 species that are common in Canada and we find that adaptive capacity is highly variable across components. On average, Pinus banksiana and Betula papyrifera species are ranked as having the highest capacity while Pinus resinosa and Tilia americana possessed the lowest, but no one species ranked consistently across the 5 components. We also identified knowledge gaps and roadblocks to conducting robust evaluations of adaptive capacity, such as the paucity of available data and the variety of methodologies employed across studies. We outlined future research needs to address these issues but tackling them will require broad collaborations across research disciplines within vegetation ecology.
