Recent land use and management changes decouple the adaptation of livestock diversity to the environment

www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN Recent land use and management changes decouple the adaptation of livestock diversity to the environment Elena Velado‑Alonso 1,2* , Ignacio Morales‑Castilla 2,3 & Antonio Gómez‑Sal 1,2 Native livestock breeds, i.e. those autochthonous to a specific region, are locally adapted domesticated animals that conserve genetic resources, guaranty food security and provide agroecosystem services. Native breeds are largely threatened worldwide by agricultural intensification and rural areas abandonment processes related to recent changes in production schemes and planning. Yet, our gap of knowledge regarding livestock breed-environment relationships may prevent the design of successful conservation measures. In this work, we analyse the links between livestock diversity -i.e. richness of native breeds- and a selection of environmental factors that express at broad scales, with a temporal perspective. We compare native breeds distributional patterns before and after the agricultural intensification, in the context of land-use change in mainland Spain. Our results confirm the existence of strong associations between the distribution of native livestock breeds and environmental factors. These links, however, weaken for contemporary distributions. In fact, changes in breed distribution reflect a shift towards more productive environments. Finally, we found that the areas having higher breed richness are undergoing land abandonment processes. Succeeding in the conservation of threatened native breeds will require going beyond merely genetic and productionoriented views. Ecological and sociocultural perspectives should also be accounted for as global change processes are determinant for livestock agrobiodiversity. Understanding the distribution of biodiversity is a major goal of ecology. An extensive literature has proposed numerous hypothesis to explain biodiversity gradients, usually linked to environmental factors such as ambient energy, water availability, vegetation productivity or environmental h eterogeneity1,2. Most of this work has focused on wild species, while much less is known about the distribution of agrobiodiversity -i.e. the variation within and across agricultural plants and domesticated animals-, especially in the case of livestock3,4. Yet, knowing which factors underlie the distribution of agrobiodiversity would be critical to understand the adaptation processes responsible to generate it and to plan conservation actions where needed. Native livestock breeds are those autochthonous and locally adapted to a specific region5. They are intraspecific groups with identifiable inheritable external traits6, resulted from differentiation processes of domesticated animals7,8. They are regarded to as geographically and/or culturally distinct and they are supported and maintained by a community of breeders. In these processes, human intended and non-intended selection, as well as other factors such as genetic and geographic isolation, inbreeding and genetic drift, ecological and historical processes or human geography, have been the key to create and maintain breeds over time5,9,10. Thus, both natural and artificial selection are involved in the diversification of breeds9. In addition, livestock breeds are considered as management and conservation units of livestock a grobiodiversity11,12. For all that, native livestock breeds represent important ecocultural -i.e. culturally and environmentally mediated- entities to p reserve13. First, they help maintaining the diversity of animal genetic resources and thus guaranty food security13,14. Second, their conservation prevent the loss of rare and unique phenotypes of current or potential future importance15. Third, breeds act as driver and providers of agroecosystem services16, which 1 FORECO – Forest Ecology and Restoration Group, Department of Life Sciences, Universidad de Alcalá, Ctra. Madrid‑Barcelona Km 33.600, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain. 2GloCEE ‑ Global Change Ecology and Evolution Group, Department of Life Sciences, Universidad de Alcalá, Ctra. Madrid‑Barcelona Km 33.600, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain. 3Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, 4400 University DriveDavid King Hall Rm 3005, Fairfax, VA 22030‑4444, USA. *email: elena.velado@ uah.es Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:21035 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77878-2 1 Vol.:(0123456789) www.nature.com/scientificreports/ are expected to be secured or increased with higher diversity rates. However, livestock breed diversity is largely threatened. Currently, there are 7,136 livestock breeds that occurs only in one country catalogued by FAO worldwide, of which 27% are endangered and 65% have an unknown s tatus17. Even if the value of locally adapted livestock breeds is largely recognised18, major shortfalls in our knowledge about them remain. For example, although breeds being highly locally adapted is claimed as a chief reason for their worth, especially in the context of climate c hange19, there are still gaps in our knowledge about the mechanisms involved in breeds a daptations3,20. However some efforts have been done in that direction in recent decades21–23. Besides, even when in situ is supposedly the preferred conservation option24, most research focuses on breed genetics and animal production. For the moment, research on the topic from an ecological perspective has been neglected19, and even so, ecological views could help to widen our understanding of breed-environment interactions. Wild and domesticated diversity have followed markedly different evolutionary p athways25. While climate 26 and biogeography have proven to exert a major influence on wild d iversity , less is known on their influence on the distribution of domesticated diversity. For example, we know that the distribution of domesticated animals is associated with human migrations, through a complex process where local adaptation and blending with wild populations seems to have been frequent27. Wildlife diversity is also known to be limited by human pressures28,29, especially in regions deeply modulated by humans such as the Mediterranean b asin30,31 over a historical process of at least 7,000 years. And yet, there is evidence that bioclimatic factors have determined regions where the genome of livestock breeds would have endured stronger selective p ressures32. Environmental heterogeneity has been proposed as a driver of wild species richness, since it would increase the available niche options, enhancing species coexistence, providing refuges, promoting species persistence and increasing the probability of speciation events resulting from isolation or a daptation2. In the case of domesticated animals, heterogeneity could have played a similar role, though acting through different ways. Firstly, human needs and human-modified environments should have fostered heterogeneity, promoting dive (...truncated)