PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Ivan Paz-Vinas
AU  - Géraldine Loot
AU  - Virgilio Hermoso
AU  - Charlotte Veyssiere
AU  - Nicolas Poulet
AU  - Gaël Grenouillet
AU  - Simon Blanchet
TI  - The Systematic Conservation Planning for Intraspecific Genetic Diversity
AID  - 10.1101/105544
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 105544
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/03/105544.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/03/105544.full
AB  - Intraspecific diversity is a fundamental facet of biodiversity allowing species to adapt to environmental changes. Preserving intraspecific diversity should hence be a main conservation target, although attempts to identify priority conservation areas for intraspecific diversity remain scarce. Using molecular data on six freshwater fish species sampled at a large spatial scale, we determined hot- and cold-spots of genetic diversity, and identified priority conservation areas using a systematic conservation planning approach. We demonstrated that the systematic conservation planning of intraspecific diversity is feasible. However, we found poor levels of congruency and surrogacy among conservation solutions found for each species, indicating that the conservation of intraspecific genetic diversity should be species-specific. This was because of the strong among-species incongruences in hot- and cold-spots of genetic diversity. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of systematic conservation planning for preserving intraspecific diversity, and it provides guidelines to identify priority conservation areas for intraspecific genetic diversity.