Early Life History Divergence Mediates Elevational Adaptation in a Perennial Alpine Plant.

Spatially divergent natural selection can drive adaptation to contrasting environments and thus the evolution of ecotypes. In perennial plants, selection shapes life history traits by acting on subsequent life stages, each contributing to fitness. While evidence of adaptation in perennial plants is common, the expression of life history traits is rarely characterized, limiting our understanding of their role in adaptive evolution.

Unravelling drivers of local adaptation through evolutionary functional-structural plant modelling.

Local adaptation to contrasting environmental conditions along environmental gradients is a widespread phenomenon in plant populations, yet we lack a mechanistic understanding of how individual agents of selection contribute to this evolutionary process. Here, we developed a novel evolutionary functional-structural plant (E-FSP) model that recreates local adaptation of virtual plants along an environmental gradient. First, we validate the model by testing if it can reproduce two elevational ecotypes of Dianthus carthusianorum occurring in the Swiss Alps.

Competitors alter selection on alpine plants exposed to experimental climate change.

Investigating how climate change alters selection regimes is a crucial step toward understanding the potential of populations to evolve in the face of changing conditions. Previous studies have mainly focused on understanding how changing climate directly influences selection, while the role of species' interactions has received little attention. Here, we used a transplant experiment along an elevation gradient to estimate how climate warming and competitive interactions lead to shifts in directional phenotypic selection on morphology and phenology of four alpine plants.

When and how can we predict adaptive responses to climate change?

Predicting if, when, and how populations can adapt to climate change constitutes one of the greatest challenges in science today. Here, we build from contributions to the special issue on evolutionary adaptation to climate change, a survey of its authors, and recent literature to explore the limits and opportunities for predicting adaptive responses to climate change. We outline what might be predictable now, in the future, and perhaps never even with our best efforts.