bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/682823; this version posted June 26, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Edgy conservation: Canadian plants at-risk are overwhelmingly range-edge populations 2 and under-studied 3 4 S. Klemet-N’Guessan1*, R. Jackiw2*, C.G. Eckert2*, A. L. Hargreaves1* 5 1. Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Dr Penfield Ave, Montreal, Quebec, 6 Canada, H3A 1B1 7 2. Department of Biology, Queen’s University, 116 Barrie St., Kingston, ON, Canada, K7L 8 3N6 9 10 *SKN and RJ made equal contributions, as did CGE and ALH as senior authors. 11 †Current address: Department of Biology, Trent University, 2140 East Bank Drive, 12 Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, K9L 1Z8. 13 ††Corresponding Author:
[email protected]; 514 398 7401 14 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/682823; this version posted June 26, 2019. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 15 ABSTRACT 16 As biodiversity declines toward the poles, high-latitude countries will contain the poleward range 17 edge of many species, potentially focusing national conservation toward range-edge populations 18 whose global conservation value remains contentious.