Meeting: Catalysis Meeting

Tracking the biotic response to global climate change through genomic analysis

Date27-Apr-2012 ~ 29-Apr-2012
ProjectTracking the biotic response to global climate change through genomic analysis
SummaryOver the last decade, evidence has accumulated demonstrating the biotic response to climate change. Populations of various taxa have shifted their ranges poleward and have altered their seasonal timing to resemble more equatorial populations. Such responses to climate change are expected to affect the genetic composition of populations, yet the specific genetic effects of climate change largely remain unknown. The advent of next-generation sequencing allows us to assess these changes on a genomic scale by resequencing the genomes of individuals from focal species collected through time and space. This analysis will result in a synthesis of ecology, evolution and genomics on an unprecedented scale. Drosophila melanogaster and closely related congeners are excellent species for the initial step in this endeavor. These flies have shown genetic shifts concordant with climate change, have broadly distributed ranges and a wealth of genetic tools available for functional characterization. Our inter-disciplinary team of experts in climate change science, population genetics, evolutionary ecology and informatics will: 1) Develop a coherent and unified strategy for collecting Drosophila spp. and generating whole genome resequence data; 2) Develop guidelines and goals for dissemination of geospatially-tagged population genomic data for any species in a highly accessible format; 3) Draft a proposal to the NSF’s Research Coordination Network to fund the organizational management of this integrative and international group and fund the development of a web-based infrastructure for data dissemination; 4) Draft a ‘call-to-arms’ manuscript inviting the broad scale community participation in this project and encouraging similar projects in other species.