Collaborative Research: ORCC:RUI: Integrating evolutionary and migratory potential of Chamaecrista fasciculata into forecasts of range-wide population dynamics under climate change

成功地保护全球生物多样性要求生物学家准确预测未来气候条件下物种灭绝的风险。然而，目前的模型经常对植物和动物的生物学做出简化的假设。例如，一些模型假设一个物种可以很容易地在景观中迁移，但事实并非如此；或者假设一个物种不能迅速进化以适应环境变化，而实际上这种可能性是存在的。我们的跨学科团队将研究植物物种的生物学，以确定研究人员和保护主义者需要哪些数据来预测气候变化将如何影响自然环境中植物的灭绝风险。我们将使用天然草原上常见且广泛分布的植物——鹧鸪豌豆（Chamaecrista fasciculata），来确定改善保护规划的生态模型所需的数据类型。我们将评估种群之间的遗传差异和基因流动速率，并估计这些种群对气候变化的进化能力，以确定最能描述或预测新气候条件下变化速率的模型。在与乔治亚植物保护联盟和东南草原倡议的合作中，我们将运用我们所学到的知识开发一系列工具，从业者可以使用这些工具来预测气候变化下濒危草原物种的灭绝风险。这项工作将大大提高我们保护美国东南部和世界各地栖息地生物多样性的能力。不同物种的种群在气候变化下的迁移和适应潜力各不相同。大多数旨在预测气候变化下种群持久性的方法都简化了对自然系统中普遍违反的可塑性、适应性和基因流动的假设。我们结合进化生物学、野外生态学和种群基因组学的方法来预测广泛分布的本地豆科植物（Chamaecrista fasciculata）在气候变化下的全范围动态。我们的研究使用历史基因流动的种群基因组估计器来研究气候变化下种群的迁移潜力。为了评估适应潜力，我们将12个种群的父系同父异母家庭暴露在当代气候和模拟气候变化的共同花园中。最后，我们将使用不同程度的模型来预测气候变化下的生态进化动态，这些模型包含了物种发生、适应气候的加性遗传变异、性状表达、序列变异和基因流等数据。我们的工作将为预测不太容易被操纵的系统对气候变化的大范围响应提供一个强有力的框架。我们将与乔治亚植物保护联盟和东南草原倡议的保护从业者合作，开发风险评估工具，预测气候变化下濒危植物物种的范围动态。在工作坊中，我们会讨论我们的工作进展，并提供机会让学员与保育业界建立联系。pi将招募、培训和指导来自人口基因组学、定量遗传学、数据分析和生态建模等历史边缘化背景的学者。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。

Successful conservation of global biodiversity requires that biologists accurately predict the risk of species extinction under future climate conditions. However, current models often make simplifying assumptions about the biology of plants and animals. For example, some models assume that a species can easily migrate through the landscape when this is not the case, or that a species is not able to evolve rapidly to environmental change when this is actually a possibility. Our interdisciplinary team will study the biology of a plant species to determine what data researchers and conservationists need to predict how climate change will influence extinction risk for plants in the natural environment. We will use the partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata), a common and widespread plant in natural grasslands, to identify the type of data needed to improve ecological models for conservation planning. We will evaluate genetic differences and rates of gene flow among populations and estimate these populations’ ability to evolve in response to climate change to identify models that best describe or forecast rates of change under new climate conditions. In collaboration with the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance and the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, we will apply what we learn to develop a series of tools that practitioners can use to predict extinction risks under climate change for at-risk grassland species. This work will significantly improve our ability to protect biodiversity in the southeastern U.S. and in habitats around the world.Populations across the range of a species vary in their migratory and adaptive potential under climate change. Most approaches aimed at predicting population persistence under climate change make simplifying assumptions about plasticity, adaptation, and gene flow that are commonly violated in natural systems. We combine approaches from evolutionary biology, field ecology, and population genomics to forecast range-wide dynamics under climate change in a broadly distributed native legume (Chamaecrista fasciculata). Our studies examine the migratory potential of populations under climate change using population genomic estimators of historical gene flow. To evaluate adaptive potential, we will expose paternal half-sib families from 12 populations to contemporary climates and simulated climate change in common gardens across the range. Finally, we will forecast eco-evolutionary dynamics under climate change using models that differ in the degree to which they incorporate data on species occurrence, additive genetic variance in fitness in response to climate, trait expression, sequence variation, and gene flow. Our work will provide a robust framework for predictions of range-wide responses to climate change in systems that are less amenable to manipulation. We will collaborate with conservation practitioners in the Georgia Plant Conservation Alliance and Southeastern Grasslands Initiative to produce risk assessment tools that project range dynamics under climate change for endangered plant species. In workshops, we will discuss our progress and provide opportunities for our trainees to forge connections with conservation practitioners. The PIs will recruit, train, and mentor scholars from historically marginalized backgrounds in population genomics, quantitative genetics, data analysis, and ecological modeling.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.