Climate Change and Adaptation

Identifying the genomic basis of local adaptation remains a central problem in evolutionary biology. Understanding the genes important for local adaptation to climate is particularly relevant given current and predicted global changes in climate. The AdapTree project brings together state of the art genomics technology, bioinformatics approaches and geospatial modelling to understand the complex genetic architecture of adaptation to climate in conifers.

Our goal is to provide policy recommendations to manage the genetic resources of these species for reforestation and insure them against catastrophic losses in a rapidly changing climate. We have assembled and annotated the transcriptomes for interior spruce and lodgepole pine. We have identified genes that maybe important for climate by examining differential expression among treatments differing in temperature and moisture using RNAseq.

Using these reference transcriptomes and draft genomes we developed DNA oligo probes in collaboration with NimbleGen and are using these probes to sequence the majority of the gene space in ~700 individuals of both species. Using FST outlier approaches and associations of SNPs with climate and phenotype we will select candidate loci that are putatively involved in climatic adaptation. We will then genotype several thousand more individuals using SNP arrays and examine evidence for local adaptation to climate with this much larger sample.