Global warming trends indicate that many geographic regions are experiencing shorter, milder winters and longer, hotter summers. Due to the accelerated onset of summer drought in western North America, local plant species reliant on snowmelt and ephemeral water supplies will experience strong selection to grow and reproduce earlier. The evolutionary response of plant species to continued changes in seasonal soil moisture availability will likely involve earlier flowering and flowering under shorter day lengths in order to escape periods of prolonged drought. Tremendous genetic variation in day length sensitivity and flowering time was recently discovered in the ecological genomic model system Mimulus guttatus and its closely related wildflower species. This adaptive variation is associated with local environmental differences in the onset of drought, and it likely represents the kinds of genetic changes that could occur in response to continued climate change.
This project uses powerful genome mapping approaches and experiments in natural habitats to identify key genes involved in variation in seasonal timing of flowering and drought escape. The investigators will engage high school and undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in workshops and research projects. Additionally, valuable collections of seed stocks and genome data will be made available to the entire scientific community. The seed collections will be available for evolutionary studies for up to fifty years from now. This will allow them to be compared to future samples from the same populations and to identify genes involved in future climate change adaptations.
