From common gardens to candidate genes: Exploring local adaptation to climate in red spruce

Local adaptation to climate is common in plant species and has been studied in a range of contexts, from improving crop yields to predicting population maladaptation to future conditions. The genomic era has brought new tools to study this process, which was historically explored through common garden experiments. In this study, we combine genomic methods and common gardens to investigate local adaptation in red spruce and identify environmental gradients and loci involved in climate adaptation. We first use climate transfer functions to estimate the impact of climate change on seedling performance in three common gardens. We then explore the use of multivariate gene-environment association (GEA) methods to identify genes underlying climate adaptation, with particular attention to the implications of conducting genome scans with and without correction for neutral population structure. This integrative approach uncovered phenotypic evidence of local adaptation to climate and identified ...植物物种普遍存在气候本地适应现象，相关研究已覆盖诸多场景——从提升作物产量，到预测种群对未来环境的适应不良风险。基因组时代为该过程的研究提供了全新工具，而此前这类研究多通过同质园实验（common garden experiment）开展。 本研究结合基因组学方法与同质园实验，对红云杉的气候本地适应现象展开研究，并鉴定参与气候适应的环境梯度与基因座（locus，复数形式为loci）。研究首先借助气候转移函数（climate transfer function），评估气候变化对3个同质园中幼苗生长表现的影响。随后探索采用多变量基因-环境关联（gene-environment association, GEA）方法鉴定气候适应相关的潜在基因，并重点探讨在是否校正中性种群结构的情况下开展基因组扫描（genome scan）所带来的影响差异。 这种整合性研究方法揭示了气候本地适应的表型证据，并鉴定出……