The Systematic Conservation Planning for Intraspecific

53 54 Intraspecific diversity is fundamental for species' adaptation to environmental 55 changes, and should hence be a main target for biodiversity conservation. However, 56 attempts to identify priority conservation areas for intraspecific diversity remain scarce. 57 Here, we used molecular data on six freshwater fish species sampled at a large spatial 58 scale, to determine hotand cold-spots of genetic diversity, and to identify priority 59 conservation areas using a systematic conservation planning approach. We demonstrate 60 that the systematic conservation planning is an efficient and relevant approach for 61 preserving intraspecific diversity, although we identify weak congruencies and 62 surrogacies among conservation solutions found for each species. These weak 63 congruencies are due to among-species variation in the spatial distribution of hot-spots 64 of genetic diversity. We finally provide operational guidelines to efficiently use 65 systematic conservation planning methods with intraspecific genetic diversity data, and 66 to identify priority conservation areas for intraspecific diversity. 67 68 69 Biodiversity conservation is a major challenge that is often addressed by 70 identifying protected areas with high biodiversity and/or landscape values 1 . 71 Conservation areas are generally identified as areas with high proportions of endemic, 72 rare or iconic species 2 . Alternatively, conservation planning can be based on the concept 73 of complementarity between conservation areas 3 , and on cost-effectiveness analyses 74 such as systematic conservation planning methods (hereafter SCP 4 ). SCP aims at 75 identifying a number of sites (i.e. irreplaceable sites that should be managed for 76 conservation in priority) best representing a predefined proportion of the biodiversity 77 observed in a region, at a minimum cost. 78 There have been attempts to include information on the phylogenetic history of 79 species assemblages into SCP approaches to preserve both species identities and their 80 macro-evolutionary history 5,6 . However, genetic diversity observed at the population 81 not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/105544 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Feb. 3, 2017;