Seed supply for broadscale restoration: maximizing evolutionary potential

By L. Broadhurst, Andrew Lowe, D. Coates, S. Cunningham, M. Mcdonald, Peter Vesk, C. Yates. Evolutionary Applications, 2008

639 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Restoring degraded land to combat environmental degradation requires the collection of vast quantities of germplasm (seed). Sourcing this material raises questions related to provenance selection, seed quality and harvest sustainability. Restoration guidelines strongly recommend using local sources to maximize local adaptation and prevent outbreeding depression, but in highly modified landscapes this restricts collection to small remnants where limited, poor quality seed is available, and where harvesting impacts may be high. We review three principles guiding the sourcing of restoration germplasm: (i) the appropriateness of using ‘local’ seed, (ii) sample sizes and population characteristics required to capture sufficient genetic diversity to establish self‐sustaining populations and (iii) the impact of over‐harvesting source populations. We review these topics by examining current collection guidelines and the evidence supporting these, then we consider if the guidelines can be improved and the consequences of not doing so. We find that the emphasis on local seed sourcing will, in many cases, lead to poor restoration outcomes, particularly at broad geographic scales. We suggest that seed sourcing should concentrate less on local collection and more on capturing high quality and genetically diverse seed to maximize the adaptive potential of restoration efforts to current and future environmental change.

Subfields: Ecology, Genetics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21a1733c4dd8421a5b848b389929f9f7de3b4949

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In Ecology

In Genetics

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Genetic considerations in ecosystem restoration using native tree species (2014, positive): “In cases where either G E or climate change are not known, composite provenancing has been proposed as a strategy to increase the adaptive potential of FRM (Broadhurst et al., 2008; Sgrò et al., 2011; Breed et al., 2013).”
Restoring species through reintroductions: strategies for source population selection (2015, background): “…variation might be important for adaptation to environment changes, such as those associated with global climate change and anthropogenic disturbance (Jones 2003, 2013; Broadhurst et al. 2008; Sgrò et al. 2011; Weeks et al. 2011; Breed et al. 2013; Kettenring et al. 2014; Jahnke et al. 2015).”
Mix and match: regional admixture provenancing strikes a balance among different seed-sourcing strategies for ecological restoration (2018, neutral): “There are other seed-sourcing strategies, composite provenancing and admixture provenancing (Broadhurst et al. 2008; Breed et al. 2013), that do not focus on climate matching but on increasing overall genetic diversity with the idea that a large genetic variability will allow for selection of the be”
Banking on the future: progress, challenges and opportunities for the genetic conservation of forest trees (2017, background): “Because appropriately sourced germplasm is necessary to ensure that new populations become self-sustaining and resilient (Broadhurst et al. 2008), the development of seed transfer zones for species restoration needs significant focus, particularly in light of rapid”
Genetic differentiation and regional adaptation among seed origins used for grassland restoration: lessons from a multispecies transplant experiment (2017, methodology): “The local provenancing approach has also been questioned (e.g. Broadhurst et al. 2008; Crowe & Parker 2008; Hoffmann & Sgr o 2011; Sgr o, Lowe & Hoffmann 2011; Breed et al. 2012; Jones 2013a,b).”
Adaptive phenotypic plasticity and plant water use (2010, background): “Considerable debate has occurred on how these plants or seeds are sourced ( Broadhurst et al. 2008 ).”
A framework for incorporating evolutionary genomics into biodiversity conservation and management (2015, background): “Compounding the issue, local provenancing often results in seed collections from small local populations that are genetically depauperate [198,199], leading to low genetic variation with inadequate potential for adaptive response to future changed conditions [200,201].”
Bridging the gap: a genetic assessment framework for population‐level threatened plant conservation prioritization and decision‐making (2016, background): “‘composite provenancing’ (Broadhurst et al. 2008)] 5 HIGH diversity + LOW inbreeding: Populations are genetically healthy but are divergent, constituting individual management units”
Evolutionary Legacy Effects on Ecosystems: Biogeographic Origins, Plant Traits, and Implications for Management in the Era of Global Change (2016, background): “Integrative perspectives that embrace the process of natural selection and consider the need for sufficient genetic diversity given the dynamic nature of the environment (Broadhurst et al. 2008) may be warranted.”
Maximizing Seed Resources for Restoration in an Uncertain Future (2016, background): “The unpredictability, unreliability, and high cost of wild seed can be further exacerbated in highly fragmented landscapes if seed quality and quantity are compromised by inbreeding (Aguilar et al. 2006, Broadhurst et al. 2008).”
Assessing the benefits and risks of translocations in changing environments: a genetic perspective (2011, background): “In cases of revegetation, planting excess seeds/seedlings should allow poorly adapted genotypes to be removed via natural selection (Broadhurst et al. 2008).”
Can an Ecoregion Serve as a Seed Transfer Zone? Evidence from a Common Garden Study with Five Native Species (2011, background): “…adaptation has been documented in plants at small (Sork et al. 1993) and large (Fenster & Galloway 2000) spatial scales, not all plant populations are locally adapted and populations are often found along a continuum with some more adapted than others (Raabova et al. 2007; Broadhurst et al. 2008).”
Climate-adjusted provenancing: a strategy for climate-resilient ecological restoration (2015, background): “Accordingly, an increasing awareness of the role of genetic provenance in plant performance has led to a strong theoretical and practical focus onmaintaining local genetic-environmental relationships Prober et al. Climate-adjusted provenancing (McKay et al., 2005; Broadhurst et al., 2008).”