Ecological and Geographic Scaling of Bioenergetic Adaptation

Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Crested Butte CO

Investigators

Abstract

IBN-0117754, Ward Watt Spatial patterns of inherited variation in natural populations can give important clues to the means by which living creatures adapt to their habitats. But patterns alone can result from different causes (e.g., natural selection by local conditions, migration patterns of organisms with different traits, historical artifacts, etc.). This study attempts to elucidate causes of an interesting pattern of variation in which, despite extensive migration among habitats, groups of individuals living in adjacent habitat types are less similar to each other than they are to groups living in a similar habitat types hundreds of kilometers away. This research will focus on in the insect genus, Colias, and will focus on variation in a key enzyme in the energy-processing system that supports the insects' flight in the wild, phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI). Extensive previous work on selection and energetics on Colias in the wild and the insect's distribution patterns in montane areas make it an ideal system for addressing these questions. The investigators will test several alternative plausible explanations for this phenomenon, examining the multiple potential causes of geographical variation in organismal traits. These tests will include studies of the mechanistic links between variation in molecular structure of enzymes, enzyme function, organismal performance, and other factors that influence population genetics. The results will illuminate the relationship between local adaptations to habitat and more general and longer-term questions of how adaptive specialization varies among species and how different kinds of organisms may or may not adapt to common environmental stresses in the same or parallel ways. They will also help inform important issues in the genetics of conservation, the genetics of agriculture, and the biological impacts of potential global change as manifested in changes of local habitat types.