Climate change disrupts local adaptation and favours upslope migration

Abstract

Contemporary climate change is proceeding at an unprecedented rate. The question remains whether populations adapted to historical conditions can persist under rapid environmental change. We tested whether climate change will disrupt local adaptation and reduce population growth rates using the perennial plant Boechera stricta (Brassicaceae). In a large‐scale field experiment conducted over five years, we exposed > 106 000 transplants to historical, current, or future climates and quantified fitness components. Low‐elevation populations outperformed local populations under simulated climate change (snow removal) across all five experimental gardens. Local maladaptation also emerged in control treatments, but it was less pronounced than under snow removal. We recovered local adaptation under snow addition treatments, which reflect historical conditions. Our results revealed that low elevation populations risk rapid decline, whereas upslope migration could enable population persistence and expansion at higher elevation locales. Local adaptation to historical conditions could increase vulnerability to climate change, even for geographically widespread species.

Resource availability alters fitness trade‐offs: implications for evolution in stressful environments

“…Additionally, both climatic factors and soil environment can drive local adaptation for some species (Macel et al, 2007). Only through manipulative experiments will we gain insight into the causal agents of local adaptation, which is critical for predicting population persistence as advancing climate change may disrupt local adaptation, favoring foreign ecotypes that evolved under warmer and more arid conditions (Wang et al, 2010;Wilczek et al, 2014;Kooyers et al, 2019;Anderson and Wadgymar, 2020).…”

Plant adaptation to climate change—Where are we?

“…For one, the distributions of many species have shifted to historically cooler regions in poleward and upslope directions (Parmesan et al, 1999;Walther et al, 2002;Parmesan & Yohe, 2003;Parmesan, 2006;Kelly & Goulden, 2008;Poloczanska et al, 2013;Burrows et al, 2014;Fadrique et al, 2018). These shifts have involved local extinctions and population contractions at the warmer range edges as well as range expansions into historically cooler regions at poleward latitudes and upslope elevations (Angert et al, 2011;Chuang & Peterson, 2016;Sheth & Angert, 2018;Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020). Additionally, many species now emerge and reproduce significantly earlier in the year, which is likely a biological response to shortened winters, earlier onset of the growing season, and prolonged droughts (Cook et al, 2012;CaraDonna et al, 2014;Hamann et al, 2018;Wadgymar et al, 2018;Dickman et al, 2019).…”

“…For one, it is challenging to assess how climate change will disrupt species interactions (Gilman et al, 2010(Gilman et al, , 2012Angert et al, 2013;Parida et al, 2015;Pauchard et al, 2015). The ecological consequences of climate change have received extensive investigation, yet fewer studies have tackled the evolutionary consequences of climate change (but see e.g., Franks et al, 2007Franks et al, , 2016Thompson et al, 2013;Wilczek et al, 2014;O'Hara et al, 2016;Peterson et al, 2018;Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020). Novel climatic conditions could impose strong selection on natural populations (Bemmels & Anderson, 2019;Exposito-Alonso et al, 2019;Fu et al, 2019).…”

“…Common garden and provenance experiments have yielded insights into whether adaptation could lag behind climate change in natural plant populations (Wang et al, 2010;Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020). For example, climate change has already induced local maladaptation in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana (Brassicaceae) (Wilczek et al, 2014) and its confamilial Boechera stricta (Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020).…”

“…Common garden and provenance experiments have yielded insights into whether adaptation could lag behind climate change in natural plant populations (Wang et al, 2010;Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020). For example, climate change has already induced local maladaptation in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana (Brassicaceae) (Wilczek et al, 2014) and its confamilial Boechera stricta (Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020). Indeed, under climate change, local maladaptation may become more pronounced, with accessions from historically warmer and more arid environments having a fitness advantage over local accessions (Anderson, 2016;Anderson & Wadgymar, 2020).…”