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的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，有助于确定物种对气候变化的脆弱程度。研究人员将测量未来10年美国西部猩红猴花范围内的人口增长率。这项研究的结果将为人口如何在气候变化中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、促进野火后健康生态系统和恢复溪流栖息地的计划。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以促进人口增长稳定的方式减轻环境变化，人口就可以从气候的时间变化中得到缓冲。或者，种群可能会显示出可变的种群增长率，跟踪气候的时间变化，以利用有利的条件。目前尚不清楚的倾向，气候缓冲和气候跟踪变化的生活史，特别是在现实变化的环境下，改变范围内的人口动态推断时，当地人口不同的缓冲和跟踪能力，并影响的可能性，遗传适应和表型可塑性促进人口的持久性，在面对极端气候。为了解决这些知识差距，研究人员将在未来10年内收集猩红猴花（Mimulus cardinalis）的广泛人口统计数据，这是一种在北美西部不同气候下发现的植物。Mimulus cardinalis是了解快速变化气候中种群持续性和适应性的理想模型，因为研究人员可以独特地综合广泛的观测和实验数据集。大规模和长期的人口观察（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的结合使其成为一个特别强大的系统，用于解剖历史和当代气候适应如何塑造分布和丰度。 将基因型和表型与广泛的时空尺度上的人口统计学联系起来，将揭示在日益极端的气候条件下对人口持续性的不可预见的见解。该奖项反映了NSF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.