The role of adaptation in determining resistance to climatic change in ecological communities
Species may respond in a number of ways when challenged with climate change. Individuals may migrate to escape the changes, or modify their phenotype to tolerate the new conditions without moving. Migration is not possible for all populations, whilst phenotypic plasticity may provide only temporary respite from a changing climate. Populations may also adapt through a process of natural selection in response to climate change. This adaptation response, mediated through selection of individuals whose genes provide an advantage in the new environment, is expected to occur quite widely in plant species. However, most research has not considered the fact that most plant species exist in communities. Interactions between species within these communities may be critical in modifying their adaptive response, hastening or extending a population's time to extinction. Thus, a community perspective is needed to deliver a more complete understanding of the response of biodiversity to climate change.A unique long-term experiment has shown that grassland communities exposed to experimental climate manipulations are resistant to compositional change. The mechanism of this effect is not known, but is likely to involve sorting of species across fine-scale environmental variation in soil depth and a component of adaptation. This project exploits this experimental resource, using next generation sequencing to understand the mechanisms underpinning plant community resistance to climate change, focussing on communities exposed to yearly summer drought and non-manipulated control communities.