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NCEAS
NCEAS Project 12358
Developing Best Practices For Testing Landscape Effects on Gene Flow
- Wagner, Helene
- Waits, Lisette
| Activity | Dates | Further Information |
|---|---|---|
| Other | 23rd—27th March 2009 | Participant List |
Abstract
A key objective of landscape genetics is to study how landscape modification and habitat fragmentation affect organism dispersal and gene flow across the landscape. Landscape genetics requires highly interdisciplinary, yet specialized professionals, and makes intensive use of spatial analysis tools such as remote sensing, GIS software and spatial statistics that have not historically been a component of training programs for population geneticists. Even when students receive disciplinary training in several of the involved fields of landscape genetics, educational programs lack the necessary linkage and synthesis among disciplines. This linkage can only be accomplished after experts from each discipline work together to develop guiding principles for this new research area. This proposed distributed graduate seminar unites some of the most active landscape genetics groups in North America and Europe, drawing on the experience of experts both in population genetics and landscape ecology with the goal of providing an integrated overview of approaches for testing the effect of landscape pattern on dispersal and gene flow, a key topic of landscape genetics.
Each seminar will start with a video-taped lecture that introduces foundations and methods and highlights points for discussion in local seminar groups. Practical experience applying various methods to selected cases studies will be provided through a combination of computer labs, interpretation of sample output, and paper discussions. Student groups across universities will focus on a specific step in the data collection and analysis process, evaluating the consequences of different choices of methods and deriving recommendations when to use which method, with each group project leading to a scientific publication. The main goal of the synthesis meeting is to discuss how consequences of methodological choices propagate to later steps in the analysis, leading to a joint publication of best practices for testing landscape effects on gene flow.
