Can We Use Genomic Data to Predict Maladaptation to Environmental Change?

Abstract

Climate change is happening fast, maybe too fast for some species and populations to adapt in time. Therefore, practice and science are highly interested in predicting how populations may react to future changes. Such information could be used to identify populations at risk or sources for assisted gene flow. Ideally, such predictions account for intraspecific genetic variation and adaptation. A promising approach is genomic offset, which aims at predicting the disruption to adaptation arising from environmental change. In this issue of Molecular Ecology Resources, Lind and Lotterhos (2024) perform an enormous simulation effort to test the performance of genomic offset under various evolutionary and ecological settings. They show that genomic offset is a valuable approach for predicting fitness under changed environments, but that performance can be reduced under certain conditions, especially under highly novel environments.