Testing the role of functional genomic variation in climate adaptation

The world’s climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, with dire consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems on which we depend for our survival. We urgently need to identify which species are at risk, and where in their range are they most vulnerable. One key route to resilience is to evolve rapidly enough to keep up with climate change. Unfortunately, the factors that govern limits to and potential for rapid adaptation are poorly understood, and consequently we lack actionable tools that allow us to predict which species can adapt, and where they may out-evolve climate change.
Plasticity is the ability of individuals to exploit environmental cues (e.g. day length or temperature) to optimally match morphology, behaviour, and life cycle events to future conditions, for instance between seasons. It is accomplished via developmental cascades that sense and translate cues into coherent trait changes, via hormonal signalling pathways, genetic regulators, and ultimately downstream effector genes.
The growing concern is that climate change is making seasonal cues less reliable. Previously adaptive existing plastic responses are now leading to mismatches between the environment and expressed traits, and unless populations can rapidly evolve new responses, they may face extinction. I have already demonstrated that capacity to evolve is absent in some populations.
Progress to understand limits to rapid adaptation, and in particular the role of plasticity, has been hampered by fragmentation across disciplines. While mechanistic biology has made great strides in disentangling the genetic and developmental pathways by which the genome makes a multicellular organism, the environment is typically ignored. Further, most insights come from studies in artificial lab environments, far from the complexities of the real world where plastic responses evolve and where they could potentially aid climate resilience. At the same time, predictive models of climate change resilience which guide species vulnerability assessments traditionally ignored important biological mechanisms such as phenotypic plasticity, adaptation, and genetics. More recently, genomic vulnerability models have become very popular, but they have some limitations.
This FLF proposes to realise Adaptive Capacity as a new common currency between mechanistic and conservation biology, by quantifying it as the genetic variation in the developmental mechanisms that regulate trait expression. I will achieve this by combining African Bicyclus butterflies with approaches from developmental biology, ecology and genetics. The first set of objectives were: A) Quantify adaptive capacity in the lab by measuring genetic variation in seasonal plasticity cascades. B) Measure adaptive capacity in the wild, revealing how these cascades have been rewired in different environments. C) Integrate experimental with genetic data to quantify adaptive capacity directly from DNA, overcoming the need for experiments. These objectives have largely been achieved.
Next, I will build on these breakthroughs to develop new methods to predict species’ resilience to climate change. First, I will map adaptive capacity of butterfly populations across Africa using genomic and climate data, integrated using genomic vulnerability models. Second, I will combine publicly available genomic, demographic and climate data to map Adaptive Capacity for a) European butterflies; b) bees in UK; c) disease vector mosquitoes in Africa. This will reveal geographic hot and cold spots of resilience to climate change. Through collaborations, mentor support and a multidisciplinary workshop, I will engage with conservation scientists, policy makers and practitioners. The ultimate aim is to develop an agenda to implement Adaptive Capacity in conservation strategies.