Climate change and land‐use changes are among the major threats to biodiversity as they alter global and local environmental conditions in unprecedented dimensions. Therefore, the investigation of the ability of species and communities to cope with rapidly changing environments as well as the comprehensive understanding of possible evolutionary adaptation processes is urgently needed for their sustainable management and the maintenance of associated ecosystem processes. Here, seminatural grasslands receive special attention, because they are among the most species‐rich ecosystems in Central Europe, which are threatened by global change and land‐use intensification already since the beginning of the twentieth century. Hence, understanding their potential to respond to rapidly changing environments is important for future management. Here, the Global Change Experimental Facility (GCEF) is an opportunity to investigate the role of microevolution in response to climate change. Two of the land‐use regimes in the GCEF are seminatural, extensively used species‐rich meadow and pasture grasslands established by sowing common, native, and regionally typical grassland species in 2014. In view of ecological restoration, for each species a seed mixture of up to seven source populations was sown aiming to establish high levels of intraspecific variation from the regional gene pool. Here, we present the first evaluation of genetic and trait variation of source populations and of their establishment in the GCEF two years after sowing for six grassland species. Using AFLP markers, we assessed genetic variation of source populations and tested whether the source gene pools have established in the experiment. Additionally, we investigated phenotypic variation of source populations and performed P_ST‐F_ST comparisons to test whether trait differentiation is adaptive. Our study revealed that genetic and phenotypic differentiation of source populations is widespread in the grassland species studied, even on small geographic scales. The GCEF populations are highly diverse due to the mixture of the different, often genetically and phenotypically differentiated source populations. They represent a genetically diverse source for both selection among existing and evolution of new genotypes. Thus, the GCEF can be used as experiment to study evolutionary processes in response to the climate change and land‐use scenarios.

中文翻译：

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气候变化实验中区域种源的建立率反映了相对份额和发芽率

气候变化和土地利用变化是对生物多样性的主要威胁，因为它们以前所未有的规模改变了全球和地方环境条件。因此，迫切需要研究物种和群落应对快速变化的环境的能力，以及对可能的进化适应过程的全面理解，以对其进行可持续管理和维护相关的生态系统过程。在这里，半自然草原受到特别关注，因为它们是中欧物种最丰富的生态系统之一，自20世纪初以来，它们就受到全球变化和土地利用集约化的威胁。因此，了解它们应对快速变化的环境的潜力对于将来的管理很重要。这里，全球变化实验设施（GCEF）是研究微观进化对气候变化的作用的机会。GCEF中的两种土地利用方式是半自然的，广泛使用的物种丰富的草地和牧场，是2014年播种的普通，本土和区域典型草原物种而建立的。考虑到生态恢复，每​​种物种的种子混合物播种了多达七个源种群，旨在从区域基因库中建立高水平的种内变异。在这里，我们介绍了六个草种播种两年后对源种群及其在GCEF中的建立的遗传和性状变异的首次评估。使用AFLP标记，我们评估了源种群的遗传变异，并测试了源基因库是否已在实验中建立。此外，我们调查了源种群的表型变异并进行了P _ST - F _ST比较，以测试特征差异是否具有适应性。我们的研究表明，即使在很小的地理范围内，源种群的遗传和表型分化在所研究的草地物种中也很普遍。由于不同的，通常是遗传和表型分化的来源种群的混合，GCEF种群高度多样化。它们代表了遗传多样性的来源，既可以在现有基因型中进行选择，又可以进行新基因型的进化。因此，GCEF可以作为实验研究响应气候变化和土地利用情景的进化过程。