Life history traits related to seasonal timing can be hypervariable within species and evolve rapidly in the face of changing climates or during biological invasions. Like many key adaptive traits, life history timing is often highly polygenic, influenced by thousands (or hundreds of thousands!) of loci across the genome. A number of our studies illustrate how divergent natural selection on life history timing can drive divergence across the genome during ecological speciation. We have also shown how polygenic adaptation is mediate through diverse developmental processes setting life history timing in the field.
Progressive changes across the developmental transcriptome control diapause regulation of seasonality and its rapid evolution. Fig 1. from Dowle et al. 2020, PNAS.
Current efforts focus on the repeatability of genetic architecture across the landscape, constraints and the genomic basis of genetic correlations, and coevolution of host and parasite genomes in response to seasonal shifts.
Ragland Lab 