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Related: About this forumSelection pressures push plants over adaption cliff new study has significant implications for
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/selection_pressures_push/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Selection pressures push plants over adaption cliff new study has significant implications for how we address rapid climate change[/font]
[font size=3]New simulations by researchers at the University of Warwick and UCLs Institute of Archaeology of plant evolution over the last 3000 years have revealed an unexpected limit to how far useful crops can be pushed to adapt before they suffer population collapse. The result has significant implications for how growers, breeders and scientists help agriculture and horticulture respond to quickening climate change.
The new study has just been published in the journal Evolutionary Genomics and is entitled Evolutionary Genomics Surprisingly Low Limits of Selection in Plant Domestication It runs counter to the most common current thinking that plants are able to cope with evolutionary pressures that strain thousands of points of change in a plant and its genetic make up at a time. While there is a cost to the plant population in undergoing such a selection pressure that cost was seen as affordable.
The new research led by Professor Robin Allaby from the University of Warwicks School of Life Sciences, simulated 3000 generations of crop plants with an annual cycle. The researchers found that in fact if pushed to change too much too soon these plants came up against a genetic cliff face. The plants moved from a high likelihood of survival as a species if faced with anything up to 50-100 change pressures at a time, to almost certain irreversible population collapse and extinction if pushed even slightly beyond 50-100 such changes.
This new study turns the spotlight back to the original thoughts of acclaimed evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane. He was the one of the first scientists to suggest that there may be a relatively low limit to the number of traits (or loci in plants governed by such mechanisms as genetic changes) that can be under selection pressures to change before that overall plant population suffers a population collapse sufficiently severe as to threaten the plants extinction.
[/font]PR171 11th April 2016[/font]
[font size=3]New simulations by researchers at the University of Warwick and UCLs Institute of Archaeology of plant evolution over the last 3000 years have revealed an unexpected limit to how far useful crops can be pushed to adapt before they suffer population collapse. The result has significant implications for how growers, breeders and scientists help agriculture and horticulture respond to quickening climate change.
The new study has just been published in the journal Evolutionary Genomics and is entitled Evolutionary Genomics Surprisingly Low Limits of Selection in Plant Domestication It runs counter to the most common current thinking that plants are able to cope with evolutionary pressures that strain thousands of points of change in a plant and its genetic make up at a time. While there is a cost to the plant population in undergoing such a selection pressure that cost was seen as affordable.
The new research led by Professor Robin Allaby from the University of Warwicks School of Life Sciences, simulated 3000 generations of crop plants with an annual cycle. The researchers found that in fact if pushed to change too much too soon these plants came up against a genetic cliff face. The plants moved from a high likelihood of survival as a species if faced with anything up to 50-100 change pressures at a time, to almost certain irreversible population collapse and extinction if pushed even slightly beyond 50-100 such changes.
This new study turns the spotlight back to the original thoughts of acclaimed evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane. He was the one of the first scientists to suggest that there may be a relatively low limit to the number of traits (or loci in plants governed by such mechanisms as genetic changes) that can be under selection pressures to change before that overall plant population suffers a population collapse sufficiently severe as to threaten the plants extinction.
[/font]PR171 11th April 2016[/font]
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Selection pressures push plants over adaption cliff new study has significant implications for
(Original Post)
OKIsItJustMe
Apr 2016
OP
WhiteTara
(29,718 posts)1. K&R
NickB79
(19,253 posts)2. Given the lack of genetic diversity in our crops, it's a miracle we haven't seen mass starvation yet
Just look at how the world's banana crops are being hammered now, because we relied so heavily on one clone.
We're staring at a global version of the Irish potato famine, only we don't have another country to emigrate to
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)3.
we don't have another country to emigrate to
Boy, aint that the truth.
http://www.history.com/news/after-168-years-potato-famine-mystery-solved