LTREB: Population persistence in a variable world: spatiotemporal variation in climate and demography across the range of scarlet monkeyflower

这个项目试图了解不同的气候如何影响植物物种的生存、生长和繁殖。了解生存、增长和繁殖如何影响种群增长的速度，有助于确定物种对气候变化的脆弱性。研究人员将在接下来的10年里测量美国西部猩红色猴花的种群增长率。这项研究的发现将为人类如何在气候变化的情况下坚持下去提供有价值的见解。这项工作将帮助土地管理者制定计划，保护稀有植物，促进野火后健康的生态系统，并恢复溪流栖息地。此外，该项目将指导和培训来自代表性不足群体的应届大学毕业生。如果一个或多个人口比率以促进人口增长稳定的方式缓解环境变化，人口可以免受气候时间变化的影响。或者，人口可能表现出不同的人口增长率，跟踪气候的时间变化，以利用有利的条件。目前尚不清楚气候缓冲和气候跟踪的倾向如何随着生活史的变化而变化，特别是在现实变化的环境中，当当地人口的缓冲和跟踪能力不同时，如何改变对种群动态的广泛推断，并影响遗传适应和表型可塑性促进种群在极端气候下持续生存的可能性。为了解决这些知识差距，研究人员将在未来10年收集猩红猴花(Mimulus Cardinalis)的范围内的人口统计数据，这种植物在北美西部的不同气候中都有发现。由于研究人员可以独一无二地综合广泛的观测和实验数据集，红腹水母是理解种群在快速变化的气候中的持久性和适应性的理想模型。大规模和长期的人口观察(到目前为止有21个种群在10-21年内)，温室和田间普通花园的实验工作，以及基因组研究使这一系统成为一个特别强大的系统，可以剖析历史和当代气候适应如何塑造分布和丰度。将基因型别和表型与广泛的时空尺度上的人口学联系起来，将揭示面对日益极端的气候时人口持续性的不可预见的洞察力。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project seeks to understand how different climates influence the survival, growth, and reproduction of plant species. Understanding how survival, growth and reproduction influence how fast a population grows helps determine how vulnerable species are to climate change. The researchers will measure population growth rates across the range of the scarlet monkeyflower in the western United States over the next 10 years. The findings of this research will provide valuable insights into how populations can persist in the face of changing climates. This work will help land managers with programs to conserve rare plants, promote healthy ecosystems after wildfires, and restore stream habitats. In addition, the project will mentor and train recent college graduates from underrepresented groups.Populations can be buffered from temporal variability in climate if one or more demographic rates mitigate environmental variation in a way that promotes stability in population growth. Alternatively, populations might show variable population growth rates that track temporal variability in climate to capitalize on favorable conditions. It remains unclear how the propensity for climate buffering and climate tracking varies with life history, particularly under realistically varying environments, alters range-wide inferences of population dynamics when local populations differ in buffering and tracking capacity, and influences the likelihood that genetic adaptation and phenotypic plasticity facilitate population persistence in the face of climate extremes. To address these knowledge gaps, the researchers will collect range-wide demographic data over the next 10 years in the scarlet monkeyflower (Mimulus cardinalis), a plant that is found across different climates in western North America. Mimulus cardinalis is an ideal model for understanding population persistence and adaptation in a rapidly changing climate because the researchers can uniquely synthesize extensive observational and experimental datasets. The combination of large-scale and long-term demographic observations (21 populations over 10-21 years to date), experimental work in greenhouse and field common gardens, and genomic studies makes this a particularly powerful system for dissecting how historical and contemporary climate adaptation shape distribution and abundance.  Linking genotypes and phenotypes to demography across a broad spatial and temporal scale will reveal unforeseen insights into population persistence in the face of increasingly extreme climates.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.