Adaptation of forest trees to climate change in the Alps: a study on ecologically different families of Pinus cembra and Picea abies

This research project investigates the climate-change related adaptive potential of Pinus cembra L. and Picea abies L., two keyspecies of the subalpine and treeline ecotones in the Alps. The microclimate of these ecotones is known to be particularly sensitive to climate change, thus a full understanding of the function of given complex traits and their genetic base seems to be important to safeguard survival of the species. For both trees, there is some evidence that genetic variation may be associated to environment and in particular to precipitation, showing the importance of water availability. Another major cause of the species decline is the fungus Phacidium infestans, which attacks P. cembra at the juvenile stage. For each species, four to six families from ecologically contrasting environments were chosen for an experiment on drought stress and phenology. The experiment was carried out in a growth chamber during spring 2014 and several phenotypic and physiological parameters were measured. Needle samples were collected to assess changes in gene expression among seedling provenances. For P. cembra, the potential differences in susceptibility to the pathogen infection was tested among seedling of different provenances. A gene expression study, intended as a first step towards landscape genomics and longer term adaptation studies, will allow the discovery of suites of genes involved in these adaptive responses. Moreover, a reciprocal trasplanting experiment across core-perypherical gradients will confirm the environmental effects on species survival and could provide important information for species genetic conservation and its forestry management.