Landscape Genomics of Angiosperm Trees: From Historic Roots to Discovering New Branches of Adaptive Evolution

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 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 a set of putatively adaptive genes, some of which are involved in three main adaptive pathways found in other temperate and boreal coniferous species: drought tolerance, cold hardiness, and phenology. These putatively adaptive genes segregated into two 'modules' associated with different environmental gradients. This study nicely exemplifies the multivariate dimension of adaptation to climate in trees.

Genome assemblies for two Neotropical trees: Jacaranda copaia and Handroanthus guayacan

The lack of genomic resources for tropical canopy trees is impeding several research avenues in tropical forest biology. We present genome assemblies for two Neotropical hardwood species, Jacaranda copaia and Handroanthus (formerly Tabebuia) guayacan, that are model systems for research on tropical tree demography and flowering phenology. For each species, we combined Illumina short-read data with in vitro proximity-ligation (Chicago) libraries to generate an assembly. For Jacaranda copaia, we obtained 104X physical coverage and produced an assembly with N50/N90 scaffold lengths of 1.020/0.277 Mbp. For H. guayacan, we obtained 129X coverage and produced an assembly with N50/N90 scaffold lengths of 0.795/0.165 Mbp. J. copaia and H. guayacan assemblies contained 95.8% and 87.9% of benchmarking orthologs, although they constituted only 77.1% and 66.7% of the estimated genome sizes of 799 and 512 Mbp, respectively. These differences were potentially due to high repetitive sequence content (>59.31% and 45.59%) and high heterozygosity (0.5% and 0.8%) in each species. Finally, we compared each new assembly to a previously sequenced genome for Handroanthus impetiginosus using whole-genome alignment. This analysis indicated extensive gene duplication in H. impetiginosus since its divergence from H. guayacan.

Genomic and phenotypic divergence unveil microgeographic adaptation in the Amazonian hyperdominant tree Eperua falcata Aubl. (Fabaceae)

Plant populations can undergo very localized adaptation, allowing widely distributed populations to adapt to divergent habitats in spite of recurrent gene flow. Neotropical trees-whose large and undisturbed populations often span a variety of environmental conditions and local habitats-are particularly good models to study this process. Here, we explore patterns of adaptive divergence from large (i.e., regional) to small (i.e., microgeographic) spatial scales in the hyperdominant Amazonian tree Eperua falcata Aubl. (Fabaceae) under a replicated design involving two microhabitats (~300 m apart) in two study sites (~300 km apart). A three-year reciprocal transplant illustrates that, beyond strong maternal effects and phenotypic plasticity, genetically driven divergence in seedling growth and leaf traits was detected both between seedlings originating from different regions, and between seedlings from different microhabitats. In parallel, a complementary genome scan for selection was carried out through whole-genome sequencing of tree population pools. A set of 290 divergence outlier SNPs was detected at the regional scale (between study sites), while 185 SNPs located in the vicinity of 106 protein-coding genes were detected as replicated outliers between microhabitats within regions. Outlier-surrounding genomic regions are involved in a variety of physiological processes, including plant responses to stress (e.g., oxidative stress, hypoxia and metal toxicity) and biotic interactions. Together with evidence of microgeographic divergence in functional traits, the discovery of genomic candidates for microgeographic adaptive divergence represents a promising advance in our understanding of local adaptation, which probably operates across multiple spatial scales and underpins divergence and diversification in Neotropical trees.

Molecular bases of responses to abiotic stress in trees

Trees are constantly exposed to climate fluctuations, which vary with both time and geographic location. Environmental changes that are outside of the physiological favorable range usually negatively affect plant performance and trigger responses to abiotic stress. Long-living trees in particular have evolved a wide spectrum of molecular mechanisms to coordinate growth and development under stressful conditions, thus minimizing fitness costs. The ongoing development of techniques directed at quantifying abiotic stress has significantly increased our knowledge of physiological responses in woody plants. However, it is only within recent years that advances in next-generation sequencing and biochemical approaches have enabled us to begin to understand the complexity of the molecular systems that underlie these responses. Here, we review recent progress in our understanding of the molecular bases of drought and temperature stresses in trees, with a focus on functional, transcriptomic, epigenetic, and population genomic studies. In addition, we highlight topics that will contribute to progress in our understanding of the plastic and adaptive responses of woody plants to drought and temperature in a context of global climate change.