Hauling field gear up Gothic Mountain…
Climate change is threatening many populations around the world. A population can avoid extinction by dispersal to more favorable locations, but that is not possible for many plants with limited seed dispersal. An alternative is evolutionary change in which changes in traits increase fitness and result in rescue of an otherwise endangered population. Some populations of a subalpine herb, Scarlet gilia, are threatened by increasingly early spring snowmelt due to climate change, which dries the soil and reduces survival. Long-term field data on this species presents a unique opportunity to examine if evolutionary rescue is likely in a plant population. We are measuring the strength of natural selection on several vegetative traits and floral traits (including flower scent), and our many decades data set allows us to examine how selection depends on the date of spring snowmelt that year. Combined with previous estimates of the heritability of traits (which affects speed of evolution), and the direct responses of traits to date of snowmelt (plasticity), we can test whether evolutionary rescue is likely in this species. Our work capitalizes on the longest data set in the world on natural selection on plant morphology to provide one of the first applications of evolutionary rescue models to natural populations.
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