Limits to Evolutionary Adaptation of Phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean

GSTDTAP

项目编号	NE/R000883/1
	Limits to Evolutionary Adaptation of Phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean
	Thomas Mock
主持机构	University of East Anglia
项目开始年	2018
	2018
项目结束日期	2020-12-31
资助机构	UK-NERC
项目类别	Research Grant
项目经费	648745(GBP)
国家	英国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Global warming is rapidly altering ocean temperature, pH, carbon saturation state, circulation, and oxidation state, and this will impact the community composition of phytoplankton; the primary producers in the world's oceans. Predicting which marine phytoplankton species will persist and dominate under these changing environmental conditions requires an understanding of the adaptive evolutionary potential of these species. With this project, we will improve understanding and predictive capability of the dynamics of polar marine phytoplankton communities, especially diatoms, and the limits of their adaptive capacities in response to environmental change driven by global warming. As single-celled microbes with large population sizes and high replication rates, phytoplankton species have considerable potential to adapt rapidly to changing environmental conditions. This can happen by (i) individual organisms adapting their phenotypes through epigenetic processes (i.e. phenotypic plasticity), (ii) by natural selection acting on individual genotypes, and by (iii) group selection (i.e. lineage and species-sorting). These three fundamental levels of selection result in changes in physiology, population genetic composition and community structure, respectively, which in turn can drive changes in both biogeochemical cycles and higher trophic levels. These adaptive changes already occur in the Arctic Ocean, yet existing climate models fail to capture these combined ecological and evolutionary adaptive responses. This proposal aims to address this fundamental gap in knowledge by studying adaptive evolution at the level of the genome, epigenome and transcriptome of a model species for polar diatoms, Fragilariopsis cylindrus, as well as 10 diatom species from the Arctic Ocean. We will thus address how environmental changes such as the loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean will impact the adaptive evolution and diversity of key primary producers with consequences for biogeochemical cycles in an ecosystem that is under extreme threat by global warming.
来源学科分类	Natural Environment Research
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/86974
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Thomas Mock.Limits to Evolutionary Adaptation of Phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean.2018.