Evolutionary genetics of adaptation to climate change

Project Objective: The goal of this project is to investigate genetic mechanism and evolutionary processes that facilitates or constrains plant adaptation to new or changing environments; and to determine the relative importance of plasticity and adaptation to species persistence.


Project description: Changes in the environment are expected to challenge the persistence of populations and species. Plants will need to adapt genetically or phenotypically to new environmental conditions to persist. However, the relative importance of genetic adaptation and phenotypic plasticity (the ability of a genotype to change its phenotype according with environmental conditions) is controversial. Models show that one key aspect of persistence for non-migratory populations is how far the population mean phenotype lags behind the change in the environment. Thus, two critical parameters are needed for better prediction of species: phenotypic plasticity, and the environmental sensitivity of selection under continuous environmental variation. This project will use an outbred population of Arabidopsis thaliana (see Scarcelli & Kover 2009) to determine the genetic basis of fitness-related traits , the effect of environmental effects such as drought and temperature on the selective value of genotypes and their plastic response.