Hiking up to the next plot…
The Flax Rust Project: Effects of climate change on the evolution and epidemiology of plant pathogens The potential for climate change to exacerbate the burden of human infectious diseases has been increasingly recognized, but less attention has been given to the effects of climate change on infectious diseases of plants. Plant pathogens are critical components of natural ecosystems, but also pose a serious threat to agricultural production and food security. Since the summer of 2018, the Flax Rust Project has used a wildflower native to the Rocky Mountains (Linum lewisii) and its fungal pathogen (Melampsora lini) to study how climate change might affect the ways in which infectious diseases of plants spread and evolve. The natural gradient of temperature and humidity that occurs down the slope of the mountains on which this study system occurs provides a good approximation for climate change. Previous work in the system has focused on the effects of climate change on the dynamics of the flax rust disease at within-host scales, and how such effects might modulate the population-level spread of disease. In this project plan, I detail plans for future work aimed at 1) building a long-term epidemiological data set to link climate change to disease dynamics, 2) identifying factors facilitating or limiting the spread of flax rust at the landscape scale, 3) investigating how plant immunological factors might modulate pathogen epidemiology, and 4) predicting how climate change might drive the evolution of plant pathogen aggressiveness and specificity.