BRS: Steve Franks "Evolutionary shifts in plant populations in response to climatic changes"

host: Amy Angert, cookies: Libby N and Rashika R

Abstract:To what extent do climatic changes cause evolutionary responses in natural populations?  This seminar presents research addressing this question using quantitative genetics, genomics, and the resurrection approach of comparing ancestors and descendants under common conditions.  Following drought in California, populations of Brassica rapa showed evolutionary shifts in flowering time, allele frequencies, and patterns of gene expression.  Drought also imposed selection on gene expression in rice.  To increase the generality of our understanding of evolutionary changes in natural populations, Project Baseline has established a collection of over 10 million seeds that are currently available for research.  These results indicate that plant populations can rapidly evolve at several different levels in response to climatic changes, and demonstrate the utility of the resurrection approach for directly examining contemporary evolution.