Increasing habitat and stress heterogeneity

As genetic diversity in conservation genetics, epigenetic diversity will be at the core of any conservation epigenetic approach. If it will prove to be relevant in various taxa, functional epigenetic diversity would be bound to environmental priming. Consequently, one essential principle to sustain epigenetic functional diversity would be to focus on environmental heterogeneity in conservation strategies. This principle is scalable, meaning that it would refer on the one side to range-wide heterogeneity e.g. strengthening rear edges conservation analogous to the genetic diversity (Hampe and Petit 2005). But it would also refer to microenvironmental heterogeneity. In other words, conservation epigenetics should aim to diversify habitat heterogeneity and welcome stress as well as disturbances as important factors to strengthen or sustain the acclimation potential of a population or species. This principle could also be reflected in ex-situ and breeding strategies. Especially for the latter, it would mean a clear deviation from current management strategies. For example, tree seeds are normally harvested in orchards or from so called plus-trees. The former normally are placed under ideal habitat situations in productive sites. In both cases seed donors normally have favorable phenotypes. If epigenetic diversity is the ultimate goal, it would mean that seeds should also come from edge populations, stressed populations, and not-perfect phenotypes, in other words selecting seeds to increase plasticity.