Getting genetic leg up on climate change
A Harvard botanist is citing climate change lessons learned at Walden Pond and urging evolutionary biologists into the global warming fray, where their knowledge of species’ genetic relationships can inform climate change predictions and guide mitigation efforts. Charles Davis, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, says that for too long evolutionary biologists have sat on the sidelines as ecologists and other biologists have examined climate change for its impact on the Earth’s living things. But research conducted in recent years by Davis, members of his lab, and collaborators from Richard Primack’s laboratory at Boston University, has shown that genetic relationships can provide key clues to which plants will succeed and which will do poorly as the globe continues to warm. The Walden Pond research, published in 2008, showed a definite shift in the plant community since Henry David Thoreau spent time there, with invasive plant species on the upswing and charismatic native...