Intraspecific genetic variation matters when predicting seagrass distribution under climate change

Seagrasses play a vital role in structuring coastal marine ecosystems, but their distributional range and genetic diversity have declined rapidly over the past decades. In order to improve conservation of seagrass species, it is important to predict how climate change may impact their ranges. Such predictions are typically made with correlative species distribution models (SDMs), which can estimate a species’ potential distribution under present and future climatic scenarios given species’ presence data and climatic predictor variables. However, these models are typically constructed with species-level data, and thus ignore intraspecific genetic variability, which can give rise to populations with adaptations to heterogeneous climatic conditions. Here, we explore the link between intraspecific adaptation and niche differentiation in Thalassia hemprichii, a seagrass broadly distributed in the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean and a crucial provider of habitat for numerous marine species. Using...