Phenotypic Plasticity and Plant Adaptation to Variable Climates

01/09/2014 to 31/08/2016

In this project I use A. thaliana as an experimental system for increasing knowledge on the geographic distribution and rapid evolvability of phenotypic plasticity and how it confers fitness advantage. More specifically the following three objectives are
addressed:
Objective 1: evaluating the relationships between the precipitation
variability at plant origins and PP in response to drought in a common garden experiment with 200 ecotypes and two treatments;
Objective 2: testing the adaptive significance of PP under variable
climatic conditions through a multi-generation selection experiment with 21 selected ecotypes;
Objective 3: improving our understanding of the mechanism through
which PP confers fitness advantages by performing a common garden experiment with multiple crossed environmental treatments applied to
30 selected ecotypes.