LA in Terrestrial Environments

Question 1

Wilczek et al, 2014 study into Arabidopsis Thaliana in Europe

COMMON GARDEN AND RECIPROCAL TRANSPLANT

Answer 1

Found locally adapted plant populations across Europe. Some Southern populations are now more adapted to northern environments than northern population due to CC-mediated temperature rise

• local genotypes on average had a higher relative fitness on average than genotypes from other region in every planting site except Finland

Question 2

Phillimore (2010) Common UK Frog study

Answer 2

Used the spatiotemporal slope method with 10,000 observations for more than 50 phenological events

SPATIAL: -2.98 slope (days per degree C)

TEMPORAL: -12.91 slope (days per degree C) 0

Then predicted future temperature across Britain using the IPCC worst case scenario (A1F1) for the years 2050-2070 and projected the advance in spawning date expected due to plasticity from the gradient of the slope for change in spawning date over time. Then projected how much they would need to change their spawning date to stay as locally adapted as they currently using the gradient of the slope for change in spawning date over space. And looked at the shortfall between the two, which looks like it could be more than 25 days.

Question 3

Hancock et al (2011) Genome Scan study for local adaptation

Answer 3

for Arabidopsis- they identified different climate variables across its habitat, e.g. daylength and number of cold days, and then did a genome scan to identify SNPs associated with these variables. For each environment they identified which SNPs were synonymous and which were non-synonymous, and found SNPs associated will all but one climate variable were more often non-synonymous. This indicates local adaption. They then identify particular SNPs they have a very strong correlation with a particular environment, look for the alleles of these SNPs that are common in a climate similar to Lille, then they grow the populations they originally tested and plot their fitness against the number of alleles they have identified as favourable in the climatic conditions of Lille. They find a strong correlation, indicating they found alleles that link to fitness in different environments.

Question 4

Stinchcombe et al (2004) Arabidopsis candidate loci

Answer 4

Predictor: latitude of origin

Response: mean days till bolting

Use known gene region FRIGIDA and determined that it modulates LA