Prioritizing populations for conservation attention using genomic SNP data

The conservation of intraspecific genetic diversity is guided by the distribution of genetic variation across geographic space (i.e., spatial structure) and across the genome (i.e., genomic structure). One question linking both structures is whether genome-wide genetic variation and putatively adaptive genetic variation identify the same set of distinct populations within species. Many authors advocate to solely use adaptive genetic variation, but it is technically and conceptually challenging to identify adaptive genetic variation for conservation. Across 34 species of plants and animals, we find that genome-wide genetic variation, which is much easier to measure, generally but variably agrees with adaptive genetic variation on population prioritizations. Putatively adaptive SNPs do as well or show higher correlation with genome-wide SNPs compared to equal-sized random subsets of genome-wide SNPs. Overall, it generally seems sound to use genome-wide genetic variation for population prioritizations to protect intraspecific genetic diversity.