Variation in reproductive systems across biogeographical and ecological gradients. Adaptation to progressively stressful environments (REPROGRAD)

Spanish National Programme for Knowledge Generation and Scientific and Technological Strengthening of the R+D+i System. (PGC2018-099608-B-I00) PI: J. Arroyo. 2019-2022.

In this project we aim to disentangle the mechanisms for what plants coped the past climatic changes which have provoked the current diversity patterns, in a region of intense climate dynamics and strong environmental variability due to its latitude and altitude range, the western Mediterranean Basin. In addition to the macroevolutionary response of the lineages, we aim to elucidate the microevolutionary mechanisms, particularly those through the plant reproduction, for which populations thrive under different climatic conditions on temperature and water availability. To do that, we have selected several study cases well suited due to their representation along altitude and latitude environmental gradients across the region in the genera Narcissus, Linum, Centaurium, Carex and Sonchus, which represent different combinations of reproductive traits. The phylogenetic and phylogeographic information and the climatic niche modelling will allow the selection of population at the extremes of the environmental gradients. In these extremes we will undertake observations and experiments to determine the reproductive output of plants and their genetic variability under these conditions. Finally, we will use plants from those populations for experimentally studying under the contrasted climatic conditions, in order to know if the possible responses have an adaptive value and if they depend on the reproductive system of the populations and species, through their mating systems and consequent heterozygosity. These results will allow determining the vulnerability of plants in some of their initial stages to the changing climate of the Mediterranean and will be useful in the future to prevent effects of the climatic changes of the Anthropocene in the demise of representative, frequently very singular, species in the environmental gradients.