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

该项目旨在了解不同气候如何影响植物物种的生存、生长和繁殖。了解生存、生长和繁殖如何影响种群增长速度，有助于确定物种在气候变化面前的脆弱程度。研究人员将在未来10年测量美国西部红猴花的种群增长率。这项研究的发现将为人类如何在气候变化的情况下生存提供有价值的见解。这项工作将帮助土地管理者制定保护稀有植物的计划，促进野火后健康的生态系统，并恢复溪流栖息地。此外，该项目还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能以促进人口增长稳定的方式减轻环境变化，人口就能从气候的时间变异性中得到缓冲。另一种情况是，人口增长率可能会随气候的时间变化而变化，以利用有利条件。目前尚不清楚气候缓冲和气候跟踪的倾向如何随着生命史而变化，特别是在现实变化的环境下，当当地种群在缓冲和跟踪能力方面存在差异时，会改变种群动态的大范围推断，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存在的可能性。为了解决这些知识空白，研究人员将在未来10年内收集大范围的红猴花（Mimulus cardinalis）的人口统计数据，这种植物在北美西部的不同气候条件下都有发现。由于研究人员可以独特地综合广泛的观测和实验数据集，因此，雀鲷是了解种群在快速变化的气候下的持久性和适应性的理想模型。结合大规模和长期的人口统计观察（迄今为止超过10-21年的21个种群），温室和田间普通花园的实验工作，以及基因组研究，使其成为一个特别强大的系统，用于剖析历史和当代气候适应如何影响分布和丰度。将基因型和表型与人口统计学在广泛的空间和时间尺度上联系起来，将揭示面对日益极端气候的人口持久性的不可预见的见解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.