Biology subjects

Petitpierre, B.

Publications and source records attributed to Petitpierre, B..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Future-proofing agrobiodiversity: climate and niche-aware conservation planning using reinforcement learning.

Despite substantial global commitments to expand protected-area networks, the strategic allocation of limited resources remains challenging. Spatial conservation planning helps identify priority regions that maximise conservation benefits per unit area. Yet, they also tend to neglect two fundamental aspects of conservation: climate-driven range shifts and the representation of environmentally distinct populations within species. Here, we propose a continental-scale conservation planning framework that explicitly accounts for both processes through novel routines implemented in the conservation planning software CAPTAIN. We apply this framework to European crop wild relatives (CWR), for which niche coverage is a focal priority, as it underpins their potential to support agricultural adaptation to future environmental stressors through breeding programs. Comparative analyses on a subset of 186 CWR associated with five focal crops show that accounting for range shifts and niche coverage leads to substantially different conservation priorities from those obtained with a baseline model based on current distributions only. These additions reduced the number of non-protected species by 64%, increased the average protected distribution range by 43%, increased mean niche coverage from 75.8% to 84.5% and reduced the number of species with less than half of their niche protected from 35 to 10. Applied to a more comprehensive checklist of 1,140 European CWRs, the final framework identifies continental-scale priority areas representing 93.5% of these taxa and includes 94.4% of its critically endangered species. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating both temporal dynamics and within-species environmental representation when designing conservation strategies under climate change. RepositoryThe repository will be made publicly accessible after publication at doi: https://10.5281/zenodo.19855597

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Importance of agriculture for Crop Wild Relatives conservation in Switzerland

Crop Wild Relatives are a subset of the global plant diversity that is often neglected, as not the primary focus for conservationists or plant breeders. However, a relatively large portion of the wild flora, up to 60% in Switzerland for example, do share genetic relationships with cultivated species and therefore can be considered as Crop Wild Relatives. Their conservation appears simultaneously a challenge to conservation programmes but also a considerable levy to mobilize other sectors, like agriculture, to contribute to the conservation of biodiversity at large. Here, we provide a comprehensive checklist of Swiss Crop Wild Relatives representing 2,226 taxa, of which 285 prioritised taxa, referred to as "Crop wild relatives Of Concern", were designated. Following a taxa-specific ecogeographic analysis, we analysed the extent to which CWR of concern are already contained in existing protected areas as well as their distribution in the agricultural area. Prioritised Crop Wild Relatives species richness was compared to modelled species richness to identify potential conservation gaps. About a fifth of CWR of concern is not significantly better protected than a random species by existing protected areas. However, 28.8 % and 15.5 % of these taxa are more frequently distributed in agricultural and summer grazing areas respectively than random expectations. A clear deficit of species richness for these Crop Wild Relatives of concern was inferred on low lands, possibly related to a lower sampling effort. We further identified a network of 39 sites that contains all taxa of Swiss CWR of concern and that could be used as a primary conservation infrastructure. More generally, our results could be generalized to other countries and support better consideration of CWR in agriculture areas, an important "reservoir" for expanding specific measures of conservation that are crucial to meet the future global goals of diversity conservation frameworks.

plant biology↗