Understanding evolutionary genomic and population processes within a species range is key to anticipating the extinction of plant species before it is too late. However, most models of biodiversity risk under global change do not account for the genetic variation and local adaptation of different populations. Population diversity is critical to understanding extinction because different populations may be more or less susceptible to global change and, if lost, would reduce the total diversity within a species. Two new modeling frameworks advance our understanding of extinction from a population and evolutionary angle: Rapid climate change-driven disruptions in population adaptation are predicted from associations between genomes and local climates. Furthermore, losses of population diversity from global land-use transformations are estimated by scaling relationships of species' genomic diversity with habitat area. Overall, these global eco-evolutionary methods advance the predictability – and possibly the preventability – of the ongoing extinction of plant species.

Biography

With his laboratory, Moi investigates whether and how plants will evolve to keep pace with climate change by conducting large-scale ecological and genome sequencing experiments. The team also develops computational methods to derive fundamental principles of evolution, such as how fast natural populations acquire new mutations and how past climates shaped continental-scale biodiversity patterns. His goal is to use these ‘first principles‘, experimental insights and computational approaches to forecast evolutionary outcomes of populations under climate change to anticipate potential future biodiversity losses.