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Prober et al. 2016 proc roy soc Dahl paper.pdf (2.48 MB)

Climate adaptation and ecological restoration in eucalypts

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posted on 2023-05-18, 22:06 authored by Prober, SM, Bradley PottsBradley Potts, Tanya BaileyTanya Bailey, Byrne, M, Dillon, S, Peter HarrisonPeter Harrison, Hoffmann, AA, Jordan, R, McLean, EH, Dorothy SteaneDorothy Steane, Stock, WD, Rene VaillancourtRene Vaillancourt
Eucalypts are the cornerstone of ecological restoration efforts across the highly modified agricultural landscapes of southern Australia. ‘Local provenancing’ is the established strategy for sourcing germplasm for ecological restoration plantings, yet this approach gives little consideration to the persistence of these plantings under future climates. This paper provides a synopsis of recent and ongoing research that the authors are undertaking on climate adaptation in eucalypts, combining new genomic approaches with ecophysiological evidence from provenance trials. These studies explore how adaptive diversity is distributed within and among populations, whether populations are buffered against change through capacity for phenotypic plasticity, and how this informs provenancing strategies. Results to date suggest that eucalypts have some capacity to respond to future environmental instability through adaptive phenotypic plasticity or selection of putatively adaptive alleles. Despite this, growing evidence suggests that eucalypts will still be vulnerable to change. Provenancing strategies that exploit adaptations found in non-local provenances could thus confer greater climate-resilience in ecological restoration plantings, although they will also need to account for potential interactions between climate adaptations and other factors (e.g. cryptic evolutionary variation, non-climate-related adaptations, herbivory and elevated CO2).

Funding

Australian Research Council

Greening Australia (Tasmania)

History

Publication title

Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria

Volume

128

Pagination

40-53

ISSN

0035-9211

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

CSIRO Publishing

Place of publication

Australia

Rights statement

Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY-NC-ND

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Hardwood plantations

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