Drivers of genetic diversity across the marine tree of life

Abstract

Why do some species have more genetic diversity than others? This question is one of the greatest remaining mysteries in evolutionary biology, yet we still know little about what factors predict genetic diversity among species. Efforts to quantify diversity or understand its distribution have been hampered by a lack of genomic data analyzed in a consistent way with statistical approaches that can move beyond the population level to generate species-wide estimates of genetic diversity. We address this critical gap by generating standardized estimates of genomic-level genetic diversity for 93 species sampled over 9,000 localities. Because marine species have evolved a strikingly diverse array of biological traits that have long been hypothesized to affect species-level genetic diversity, we focus our study on marine taxa. For each species, we aggregated biotic traits related to life history and abiotic features of the species range. We show that genetic diversity increases with species range extent and planktonic dispersal. We hypothesize that these traits increase a species ability to avoid or recover from bottlenecks, thereby maintaining genetic diversity. Our findings provide insights into how biotic and abiotic factors interact to shape genomic variation in the ocean, and offer a predictive framework for understanding marine biodiversity in the face of global change. Significance statementSpecies exhibit vast trait diversity that allows populations to persist. However, diversity in these traits -- e.g., how organisms reproduce, disperse, and feed -- is not easily linked to what is known of genomic diversity, even in well-studied organisms. We investigate a diverse assemblage of marine species to begin to build a predictive framework for how species traits drive genomic diversity across the worlds oceans. We find that species with larger geographic ranges have higher genomic diversity. More dispersive species also harbor higher diversity, suggesting that greater dispersal facilitates resilience to environmental change. As available datasets increase, our ability to understand fundamental links between trait and genetic diversity and how they shape species responses to environmental change will continue to improve.