Local adaptation plays an important role in the extension of species? ecological niche to new habitats as a consequence of the change in environmental conditions, such as climate change. Still, the genetic basis of local adaptation is not well understood, especially not in non-model species. To investigate the genomic patterns of local adaptation and their transferability between non-model species, we studied the association of genetic markers to environmental variables in five alpine plant species of the family Brassicaceae, which are related to the fully sequenced model species Arabidopsis thaliana. In this study, we sampled populations of each species in the Swiss Alps and the Jura Mountains and produced amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. After performing outlier analyses, we associated identified outliers to the seven most uncorrelated environmental variables from a set of topo-climatic GIS layers using multiple linear regressions. The analyses detected few loci of putative environmental relevance, of which one, found in Cardamine resedifolia, was selected for sequencing. We sequenced-characterized the genomic environment of this locus and searched for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within each of the five species. Identified SNPs were genotyped and tested again for environmental association to infer recurrent patterns of local adaptation in related species. Results suggested that in at least one other species, i.e., Arabis alpina, this locus is environmentally relevant or is linked to a gene under selection. Such findings are useful for modeling future vegetation dynamics and help to identify trends in plant adaptation in alpine ecosystems.

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