Affiliations: 1) Michigan State University; 2) Pennsylvania State University; 3) Washington State University; 4) University of Texas at Austin; 5) University of New Hampshire; 6) University of Queensland; 7) University of Georgia; 8) University of Vermont
Keywords: Population history
What are the spatial patterns of genetic diversity within a species, and what drives those patterns? These questions touch on some of the greatest remaining mysteries in ecology and evolutionary biology, but, despite their centrality to fundamental questions in the field, we know little about what factors predict patterns of genetic diversity within a species; indeed, for most species, we have no estimates of genetic diversity at all. Life history traits, such as fecundity, dispersal ability, philopatry are predicted to impact both the overall genetic diversity of a species and its distribution across a species’ range. Here, we test hypotheses about the relationship between life history traits and geographic patterns of genetic diversity. We take a data synthesis approach, aggregating publicly available, georeferenced, next-generation sequence datasets for over 100 species across the tree of life. We focus on marine species, for which spatial patterns of diversity are more poorly understood than in terrestrial systems. For each species, we use these data to estimate population genetic quantities, including Wright’s neighborhood size and diversity in the collecting phase. We also aggregate biotic trait data for these species and abiotic geographic data for the areas in which they were sampled. Finally, we place these species on a time-calibrated phylogeny. Taken together, these data allow us to integrate across scales both temporally and spatially to test hypotheses about whether biotic and abiotic factors predict genomic diversity and divergence in marine ecosystems.