Plants adapt to changing climate primarily by altering their seasonal life phase transitions, such as the timing of germination and the timing of flowering. Thus, a major question regarding plant responses to environmental change concerns the genetic basis and adaptive significance of these responses. For annual plant species, the timing of germination and flowering are especially important because they influence each other both environmentally and genetically. Very little is known, however, about the genes that underlie natural variation in their response to seasonal environments, especially for germination timing. This research combines the measurement of natural selection in the field and molecular-genetic analysis to test hypotheses about the genetic basis of natural variation in life cycle responses to seasonal conditions in the annual plant Arabadopsis thaliana, and to examine how different genes interact to determine its overall fitness.
The project investigates fundamental genetic mechanisms of variation as a function of seasonal factors that vary with dispersal and climate change. The work therefore has relevance to predicting dynamics of introduced weedy species dispersed over a broad geographic range, as well as predicting their responses to environmental change. The project also contributes to an ongoing international collaboration with scientists in Germany and Spain.
