ISSUE |
Long term performance |
Adaptation lag |
Demographic history |
Altered environments |
|
Short term fitness not indicative of long term or life-time fitness,
especially for long-lived organisms |
Adaptation not keeping pace with
climate change, resulting in local being adapted to historic not current
conditions. |
Demographic history, such as recent expansion and
bottlenecks, may reduce local adaptation. |
Significant environmental
changes, especially anthropogenic change, resulting in novel local
conditions |
Species
|
Cider gum
(Eucalyptus gunnii-archeri)
|
Valley oak
(Quercus lobata)
|
Thale cress
(Arabidopsis thaliana)
|
Metallophyte legumes
(Mimosa acutistipula var ferrea and Dioclea
apurensis)
|
Location |
Tasmania, Australia 1
|
California, USA
2
|
Sweden and Italy 3
|
Amazon,
Brazil 4
|
Overview |
35 year old provenance trial. Survival, growth and frost
damage used to assess provenance performance. |
Combined common garden
trials and genomic analysis; assessing relative growth and associated
genomic loci |
Multi-year reciprocal transplant trials and genomic
analysis assessing performance of both wild and F1 recombinant inbred
lines. |
Genomic analysis; predicting performance based on
genotype-climate and genotype-phenotype associations. |
|
|
|
|
|
Key finding |
Performance of local declined over time, with non-local
outperforming local after 25 years. |
Predicted greater growth using
non-local seed sources accounting for adaptation lag. |
Swedish
population was most fit in Sweden in only 3 of 5 years; Swedish alleles
in Sweden were often maladaptive. |
Local genotypes predicted not to
match highly disturbed (ex-mining) sites. |
Take home |
Local not best in long-term, despite
initial short-term outcomes |
Local already not best due to
adaptation lag behind recent climate changes |
Local not most
fit due to demographic history impacts on local populations |
Local no longer suitable where site conditions have
significantly changed |