Anderson Jill, Song Bao-Hua
Department of Genetics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA.
J Syst Evol. 2020 Sep;58(5):533-545. doi: 10.1111/jse.12649. Epub 2020 Jun 18.
Climate change poses critical challenges for population persistence in natural communities, agriculture and environmental sustainability, and food security. In this review, we discuss recent progress in climatic adaptation in plants. We evaluate whether climate change exerts novel selection and disrupts local adaptation, whether gene flow can facilitate adaptive responses to climate change, and if adaptive phenotypic plasticity could sustain populations in the short term. Furthermore, we discuss how climate change influences species interactions. Through a more in-depth understanding of these eco-evolutionary dynamics, we will increase our capacity to predict the adaptive potential of plants under climate change. In addition, we review studies that dissect the genetic basis of plant adaptation to climate change. Finally, we highlight key research gaps, ranging from validating gene function, to elucidating molecular mechanisms, expanding research systems from model species to other natural species, testing the fitness consequences of alleles in natural environments, and designing multifactorial studies that more closely reflect the complex and interactive effects of multiple climate change factors. By leveraging interdisciplinary tools (e.g., cutting-edge omics toolkits, novel ecological strategies, newly-developed genome editing technology), researchers can more accurately predict the probability that species can persist through this rapid and intense period of environmental change, as well as cultivate crops to withstand climate change, and conserve biodiversity in natural systems.
气候变化对自然群落中的种群存续、农业及环境可持续性以及粮食安全构成了严峻挑战。在本综述中，我们讨论了植物气候适应方面的最新进展。我们评估气候变化是否施加了新的选择并破坏了本地适应性，基因流动是否能够促进对气候变化的适应性反应，以及适应性表型可塑性是否能在短期内维持种群数量。此外，我们还讨论了气候变化如何影响物种间的相互作用。通过更深入地理解这些生态进化动态，我们将提高预测气候变化下植物适应潜力的能力。此外，我们综述了剖析植物适应气候变化遗传基础的研究。最后，我们强调了关键的研究空白，从验证基因功能到阐明分子机制，将研究系统从模式物种扩展到其他自然物种，在自然环境中测试等位基因的适合度后果，以及设计更能反映多种气候变化因素复杂交互作用的多因素研究。通过利用跨学科工具（如前沿的组学工具包、新颖的生态策略、新开发的基因组编辑技术），研究人员能够更准确地预测物种在这一快速且剧烈的环境变化时期得以存续的概率，培育能够抵御气候变化的作物，并保护自然系统中的生物多样性。
