Advances and limits of using population genetics to understand local adaptation

Local adaptation is an important process shaping within species diversity. In recent years, population genetic analyses, which complement organismal approaches in advancing our understanding of local adaptation have become widespread. Here we focus on using population genetics to address some key questions in local adaptation: What traits are involved? What environmental variables are most important? Does local adaptation target the same genes in related species? Do loci responsible for local adaptation exhibit tradeoffs across environments? After discussing these questions we highlight important limitations to population genetic analyses including challenges with obtaining high quality data, deciding which loci are targets of selection, and limits to identifying the genetic basis of local adaptation.