Data and code from : The amount of genetic variance required for evolutionary rescue varies among life history traits in an endangered species.

The respository contains all the code and data used in the analysis of the paper. Abstract of the paper : Declining populations can avoid extinction by returning to a positive growth rate through rapid adaptation, a process known as evolutionary rescue. Past theory has shown that rescue is unlikely below a critical genetic variance for adaptive traits. Many threatened populations are structured, with individuals in different stages expressing life-history traits that differ in their contributions to population growth rate, as measured by demographic elasticities. Here, we improve our theoretical understanding on how genetic variation for different life-history traits contributes to evolutionary rescue and move towards operational measures of critical genetic variation. We use a quantitative genetics model of evolution in stage-structured populations to predict evolutionary rescue as a function of the genetic variance and covariance among life-history traits, which we then illustrate with the case of the endangered plant Centaurea corymbosa. When a single life-history trait is genetically variable, a specific range of variance allows rescue and the critical minimal variance is smaller for life-history traits with large elasticity. When several life-history traits jointly evolve, rescue is more likely when genetic variation is abundant for combinations of lie-history traits with large elasticity. Overall, we show that genetic variation for different life-history traits does not contribute equally to evolutionary rescue, and offer a framework for integrating genetic and demographic data to guide conservation strategies.