Transcriptomic response to thermal stress in environmentally diverse seagrass populations
The dominant seagrass in South Africa, Zostera capensis Setchell, is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, due to its declining fragmented populations and sensitivity to anthropogenic impacts. Anthropogenically-forced climate change is projected to increase the incidence of climatic extremes. Addressing questions around how these climatic extremes will affect foundational species such as Z. capensis and how to restore the declining populations requires investigations of functional responses within and between populations along its distribution. Ecological transcriptomics would be a useful approach for studying functional responses of Z. capensis through quantification of gene expression changes in response to environmental changes. This study provides insights into the thermal resilience of two genomically divergent Z. capensis populations, that could help us to forecast the persistence of more resilient populations under future predicted climate change scenarios.