Biodiversity and adaptation in the face of global environmental change
According to a UN report in 2006, human activity is causing the greatest mass extinction for 65 million years. Factors such as pollution, changes in land use for food and fuel production, crop monoculture, and increased development activities are having dramatic consequences on many ecosystems. Climate change is leading to different weather patterns, including more extreme weather events and variations in rainfall and temperatures. What will be the impact of these changes on biodiversity as species either adapt successfully or become extinct?
ELSA is providing the opportunity for researchers at the John Innes Centre and University of East Anglia to work synergistically to understand both the molecular basis of adaptation and the ecological impacts of this enforced adaptation to a changing environment.
Central to this pillar is a comprehensive understanding of existing populations adapted to different habitats. Advanced genomic technologies are being used to gain in-depth knowledge of how plants and microbes adapt to their environment at the genetic and molecular levels. For example, Arabidopsis thaliana plants from around the globe have flowering times adapted to their local temperatures. JIC scientists have discovered the genetic mechanisms responsible for this adaptation. This knowledge will not only help in breeding new crop varieties better adapted to changing climate around the world, but also further our understanding of the molecular basis of plant evolution and adaptation.
This information is being integrated into predictive models developed by UEA that operate at the level of individual species, as well as communities and populations. Entire ecosystems and landscapes can then be modelled to assess the impact of environmental changes on the species living therein.
Linking the genetic drivers of adaptive variation with large scale consequences is a challenging approach that the Alliance is uniquely placed to embrace. With world-class research capacity in genomics and population dynamics, outputs from this pillar will feed directly into our understanding of the impacts of human intervention and climate change on biodiversity, as well as more targeted crop breeding programmes to develop crops better suited for different environments.
