Theory suggests that a population that is organized into spatially separated groups will respond to environmental change differently than a single spatially uniform population of the same size. This theory has not been tested in natural populations because of the technical difficulty of measuring the processes that are invoked to account for the difference between spatially subdivided and uniform populations. The proposed work takes advantage of a novel combination of approaches to measure the roles of chance loss of genetic diversity on the ability of small populations to adapt to environmental change, and the potential for the movement of individuals among small populations to ameliorate this effect. The research will examine patterns of adaptive potential in spatially separated groups of a plant population, and patterns of movement among groups using field experiments and the analysis of molecular marker data.
The focal species for this project, Hypericum cumulicola, is a federally listed endangered plant, and the results of the proposed work will contribute to understanding the requirements for its long-term persistence. More generally, the findings from the research will be applicable to numerous populations that have become spatially subdivided by human activities and face inevitable environmental change.
