Shaped by the environment – adaptation in plants

Abstract

As sessile organisms that are unable to escape from inhospitable environments, plants are at the mercy of the elements. Nonetheless, plants have managed to adapt, evolve and survive in some of the harshest conditions on earth. The FEBS Workshop ‘Adaptation Potential in Plants’, held at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Vienna, Austria from 19 to 21 March 2009, provided a forum (including 18 invited talks, 8 selected short talks and 69 posters) for about 100 plant biologists from 32 countries, working in the diverse fields of genetics, epigenetics, stress signalling, and growth and development, to come together and discuss adaptation potential in plants at all its levels.

Desiccation tolerance: From genomics to the field

“…It will be interesting to develop this approach in desiccation tolerance using the high-throughput deep sequencing techniques and other genomics developments [102,103]. An estimated 18% of tree and shrub taxa produce seeds that remain sensitive to enforced drying after shedding [104].…”

Evolutionary diversification of bruchine beetles: climate-dependent traits and development associated with pest status

“…This review focused on climate effects on the evolution, developmental stages, variation within and among taxonomic groups, species interactions and coexistence in holometabolous insects, particularly beetles. Genetic effects on physiological plasticity and adaptation tend to be underestimated in previous studies, except for some that have used model organisms such as Drosophila (Hoffmann et al ., 2003) and Arabidopsis (Siomos, 2009). For well-studied laboratory model insects, however, extra caution must be paid to eliminate bottleneck events and artificial selection due to laboratory conditions and rearing.…”