Genetic and microevolutionary considerations in California grassland restoration

Restoration of California grasslands has typically focused on ecological factors. I suggest that genetic and evolutionary factors are just as important and that when planning for grassland restoration in the face of rapid global change, an understanding of scales of adaptation and evolutionary potential is crucial.  The complex climatic diversity of California grasslands, when coupled with habitat fragmentation and a very dynamic invasive flora, creates a similarly dynamic and complex selection environment.  In developing restoration strategies, it is not only important to consider the impact of local adaptation in native species but also the reality of rapid evolutionary change in the invasive species that make grassland restoration so difficult in the first place. Although information on even the most common species used in grassland restoration is surprisingly limited, I will give some examples that demonstrate the importance of considering biotic (e.g., competition and disease) as well as abiotic (e.g. soil characteristics) selection factors. I will also describe how the interplay of genetic and ecological factors determines the evolutionary potential of restored grasslands to respond to future selective challenges. Finally, recent technological advances have made molecular genetic markers accessible to both restoration ecologists and practitioners. Although these markers can be very useful for measuring processes such as gene flow, I will illustrate that the use of these markers in trying to measure zones of adaptation are generally not informative and may even be counter-productive.