Data from: Does genome-wide variation and putatively adaptive variation identify the same set of distinct populations?

Identifying which populations within species to prioritize for
conservation is a major challenge: one question is whether to prioritize
populations based on adaptive variation versus considering genome-wide
genetic variation. Many authors have advocated focusing solely on adaptive
variation due to its direct connection to selection, function, and
adaptive capacity. However, there are many limitations in identifying and
using adaptive genetic variation for conservation. Patterns of genome-wide
genetic variation may be congruent with patterns of adaptive genetic
variation, and genome-wide variation is much easier to measure. However,
evidence for congruence is mixed. We gather genome-wide and putatively
adaptive SNP data across 34 species of plants and animals from published
outlier and association studies to test congruence. We ask whether
putatively adaptive subsets of genome-wide SNPs identify the same
distinctive populations (measured using the Shapley Value of
distinctiveness) as genome-wide SNPs. We find that genome-wide and
putatively adaptive SNPs generally but variably agree on population
prioritizations. As expected, the level of agreement is predicted by the
proportion of putatively adaptive SNPs, and the agreement is lower when
there is more overall population genetic structure. Interestingly, across
our datasets, putatively adaptive SNPs do as well or better at predicting
genome-wide population prioritization than sized-matched random subsets of
SNPs. Taken together, using genome-wide genetic variation for population
prioritization may be a generally sound and cost-effective strategy for
prioritizing populations in order to safeguard species-level genetic
variation.