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Landscape genomics

Hybridization provides climate resilience

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 212–213 (2023)Cite this article

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Hybrid populations have long been perceived as a threat to distinct lineages and undervalued from a conservation perspective. Now, research suggests that hybrid populations may harbour gene combinations that improve their ability to cope with changing climate conditions.

Central to our understanding of how species may respond to climate change is the idea, originating in the early 1900s4, that organisms are associated with a specific ecological niche, or range of environmental conditions that enable survival and reproduction5. A species’ ecological niche determines its distribution and abundance and can be quantified under current or ideal conditions to predict future species distributions under climate warming6. However, ecological niche models often treat organisms as static and uniform entities, overlooking the evolutionary processes that lead to heterogeneity in species’ responses7. Recognizing that populations are locally adapted to specific environments, recent research has begun to integrate genomic data into these models to examine how responses to climate change may vary across a species’ range8,9,10. To achieve this, researchers first characterize the relationship between genetic variation involved in climate adaptation and current environmental conditions. Then, they apply this model to future climate projections to predict how much genomic composition must shift in order to keep pace with climate change (a metric referred to as genomic vulnerability)10.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Sheela P. Turbek

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Scott A. Taylor

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  1. Sheela P. Turbek
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  2. Scott A. Taylor
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Correspondence to Sheela P. Turbek.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Turbek, S.P., Taylor, S.A. Hybridization provides climate resilience. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 212–213 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01586-0

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