Population and functional genomics on the evolutionary study of neotropical Rhizophora species in face of historical and current climate changes

Abstract

Global climate changes (GCC) are alterations on the climate properties whose causes may still be questioned but whose biological effects are unquestionable. Despite of its impact on living beings, they and the velocity of these changes is heterogeneous regarding the organism and the ecosystem, for example, mangrove forests are projected to be one of the most influenced environments. Recent advances achieved by many research groups including ours evidenced that these tree communities have responded to past GCC and that they are already responding to the current ones. In this context, the main objective of this project is to comprehend how mangrove trees have evolved in face of past selective pressures of historical GCC and how these organisms may face the present changing world. This approach involves genome scans of natural populations along the entire geographic distribution of West Pacific and Atlantic species of the genus Rhizophora both to understand the evolutionary history of these species and to detect natural selection signatures in the genomic level. Taking advantage of a transcriptome published for R. mangle and the gene expression we will carry out for Brazilian samples of this species, another layer of information may be added to gather more information to relate eventual selection evidences to known expressed sequences. This proposal will complement the regular Post-Doctorate fellowship project that focus neotropic Avicennia species in a way to better understand, comparatively, what processes affect these distantly related genera. It will enable the study of fundamental factors that affect the evolutionary history and genetic diversity of mangrove trees. This project is scientifically challenging with high visibility expected results and this integrative approach aims to make available valuable information for means of management and conservation in a global scale of these threatened environments. (AU)