People
Niek Scheepens, Cyrille Violle, Denis Vile, François Vasseur, Eric Garnier, Detlef Weigel, Oliver Bossdorf, Elena Kazakou, Thomas Lenormand
Duration
March 2018
– October 2022
In short
The core of the project is a multi-year
evolution experiment with mixed Arabidopsis
thaliana accessions under contrasting nutrient availability and herbivory
treatments, which we use to understand phenotypic and genomic adaptation to
these stressors.
Project description
The ability of organisms, specifically plants,
to adapt to changing environmental conditions is of central interest in
evolutionary ecology, and understanding this process is important given rapid
global climate change. Adaptation can be hampered by genetic drift,
environmental heterogeneity, and lack of genetic variance of underlying traits.
Moreover, ecological theory states that plants cannot simultaneously be efficient
at certain tasks, such as acquiring and conserving resources, or be both
competitive and stress tolerant. Resulting trade-offs were originally
identified in comparative ecology as major constraints on the diversification
of life forms and functions, but the general applicability of these constraints
remains to be elucidated.
Experimental evolution provides a formidable
opportunity to examine the process, rate and strength of selection in real
time, as well as to test the validity of prominent ecological hypotheses. The AraBreed
project will assess changes in major ecological trade-offs and the underlying
allelic composition of plant populations in response to controlled selection
pressures combining biotic and abiotic stresses. Importantly, AraBreed will
benefit from extensive genetic material generated on the model species
Arabidopsis thaliana to conduct experimental evolution over three generations
in environments contrasting in resource (nutrient and water) availability and
herbivory. We will use 350 F2 populations (500,000 genotypes) previously
generated from random crosses between 400 phenotyped and sequenced natural
accessions collected across Eurasia. This has likely recreated phenotypes
thought to be purged from natural populations and gives access to genetic and
phenotypic diversity in both ancestral and adapted populations. Evolving plants
will be phenotyped in situ and collected for analysis in controlled conditions
(ex situ phenotyping), reciprocal transplant experiments and next-generation
sequencing (pool-seq). In addition to the analysis of the evolutionary
trajectories of trait covariations and genetic trade-offs, results will be
compared to evolutionary outcomes under variable climates in a multi-site
evolution experiment conducted on the same species worldwide.
Experimental evolution on a small, short-lived
model species grown in contrasting environments provides a powerful tool to
examine the extent of intraspecific phenotypic variability, the role of
constraints and selection in shaping pervasive ecological trade-offs, as well
as to identify potential limits for selection on specific traits. The project,
at the intersection of comparative ecology, evolutionary biology and population
genomics is multifaceted and highly transdisciplinary. AraBreed therefore
carries large potential to advance both fundamental and applied life sciences.
Publications