Testing how developmental pathways can predict evolutionary adaptation to climate change: an Eco-Devo approach.

世界气候正在以前所未有的速度变化，给我们赖以生存的生物多样性和生态系统带来可怕的后果。为了有机会管理这种转变，我们迫切需要确定哪些物种处于危险之中，以及是什么决定了它们的命运。恢复能力的一个关键途径是迅速发展，以跟上气候变化的步伐。不幸的是，我们对限制和快速适应潜力的因素知之甚少，因此我们缺乏可操作的工具，使我们能够预测哪些物种可以适应，以及它们在哪里容易受到影响。可塑性是个体利用预测性环境线索的能力，以便将形态，行为和生命周期事件与当前或未来条件（例如季节之间）进行最佳匹配。它是通过发育级联反应，通过传感机制，激素信号通路，遗传调节因子，并最终下游效应基因，将线索转化为连贯的性状变化。人们越来越担心的是，气候变化正在降低线索的可靠性，并改变性状之间的最佳平衡。在气候变化下，以前适应性的现有塑料反应现在导致环境和表达特征之间的不匹配，除非种群能够迅速进化出新的反应，否则它们可能面临灭绝。我已经证明，某些种群缺乏进化能力，而对快速适应的局限性的理解，尤其是可塑性的作用，由于学科之间的割裂而受到阻碍。虽然机械生物学在解开基因网络和基因组形成多细胞生物体的发育途径方面取得了长足的进步，但环境的作用通常被忽视为噪音。更糟糕的是，大多数研究都是在人工实验室环境中进行的，远离真实的世界的复杂性，在那里塑料反应会进化，它们可能有助于气候适应能力。另一方面，指导物种脆弱性评估的气候变化适应力预测模型的解释力有限，因为它们忽略了重要的生物学机制，如表型可塑性，适应性和遗传学。由于缺乏高质量的经验数据和分析方法来整合不同类型的数据，快速适应在这些复原力模型中的整合尤其糟糕。我开创了将发展、进化和生态分析方法结合在一起的综合方法，并将热带蝴蝶作为实施这一议程的强大模型。令人兴奋的是，DNA测序、遗传学和统计学的新分析方法现在有望将以前完全不同的领域联系起来。我的多学科研究使我处于一个独特的位置，利用这些新的技术发展，并实现适应能力作为机械和保护生物学之间的共同货币。具体而言，是在调节性状表达的发育途径的关键调节中心的遗传变异。重要的是，开发这种共同货币将使新的工具能够从实地收集的DNA样本和气候数据中预测对气候变化的进化反应。一个FLF将为我提供一个机会来实现这一变革性的研究议程，并建立我作为生态发展和气候变化生物学领域的领导者。

The world's climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, with dire consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems on which we depend for our survival. To have a chance at managing this transition, we urgently need to identify which species are at risk, and what determines their fate. 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 are vulnerable. Plasticity is the ability of individuals to exploit predictive environmental cues in order to optimally match morphology, behaviour, and life cycle events to current or future conditions, for instance between seasons. It is accomplished via developmental cascades that translate cues into coherent trait changes, via sensing mechanisms, hormonal signalling pathways, genetic regulators, and ultimately downstream effector genes. The growing concern is that climate change is making cues less reliable, as well as changing the optimal balance between traits. Under climate change, 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 gene networks and developmental pathways by which the genome makes a multicellular organism, the role of the environment has typically been ignored as noise. Worse, most studies have been carried out in artificial lab environments, far from the complexities of the real world where plastic responses evolve and where they could potentially aid climate resilience. On the other hand, predictive models of climate change resilience which guide species vulnerability assessments suffer from limited explanatory power as they ignore important biological mechanisms such as phenotypic plasticity, adaptation, and genetics. Rapid adaptation is particularly poorly integrated into these resilience models, due to lack of high-quality empirical data and analytical methods to integrate different types of data.I have pioneered integrative approaches that bring together developmental, evolutionary, and ecological analytical methods, and have set up tropical butterflies as a powerful model to implement this agenda. Excitingly, new analytical methods in DNA sequencing, genetics, and statistics now hold the promise to connect previously disparate fields. My multidisciplinary research places me in a unique position to exploit these new technological developments, and realise adaptive capacity as a common currency between mechanistic and conservation biology. Specifically, is genetic variation at key regulatory hubs of developmental pathways that regulate trait expression. Importantly, developing this common currency will enable new tools to predict evolutionary responses to climate change from field-collected DNA samples and climate data. A FLF would provide me with the opportunity to deliver on this transformative research agenda, and establish me as a leader in the field of Eco-Devo and climate change biology.