ISSUE Long term performance Adaptation lag Demographic history Altered environments
Short term fitness not indicative of long term or life-time fitness, especially for long-lived organisms Adaptation not keeping pace with climate change, resulting in local being adapted to historic not current conditions. Demographic history, such as recent expansion and bottlenecks, may reduce local adaptation. Significant environmental changes, especially anthropogenic change, resulting in novel local conditions
Species
Cider gum (Eucalyptus gunnii-archeri) Valley oak (Quercus lobata) Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) Metallophyte legumes (Mimosa acutistipula var ferrea and Dioclea apurensis)
Location Tasmania, Australia 1 California, USA 2 Sweden and Italy 3 Amazon, Brazil 4
Overview 35 year old provenance trial. Survival, growth and frost damage used to assess provenance performance. Combined common garden trials and genomic analysis; assessing relative growth and associated genomic loci Multi-year reciprocal transplant trials and genomic analysis assessing performance of both wild and F1 recombinant inbred lines. Genomic analysis; predicting performance based on genotype-climate and genotype-phenotype associations.
Key finding Performance of local declined over time, with non-local outperforming local after 25 years. Predicted greater growth using non-local seed sources accounting for adaptation lag. Swedish population was most fit in Sweden in only 3 of 5 years; Swedish alleles in Sweden were often maladaptive. Local genotypes predicted not to match highly disturbed (ex-mining) sites.
Take home Local not best in long-term, despite initial short-term outcomes Local already not best due to adaptation lag behind recent climate changes Local not most fit due to demographic history impacts on local populations Local no longer suitable where site conditions have significantly changed