Genomic responses to environmental variation and change in the ocean
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Abstract Human activities are driving dramatic changes in the global environment. One consequence of this change is the rapid warming and acidification of the ocean. Throughout the Earth's history, sudden environmental change has often been associated with mass extinctions. However, in some cases species can adapt to changing environments via natural selection on heritable genetic variation. Most genetic variation, however, is not important for adaptation, and instead reflects the influences of mutation and drift on variants with minimal fitness consequences. For this reason, it has been difficult to assess the adaptive potential of populations and species even when genetic data are available. This thesis uses new genome-wide approaches to the analysis of the functional consequences of genetic variation to determine the spatial distribution and abundance of the functional genetic variation that could drive adaptive responses to environmental change. In the first chapter, I use gene co-expression network analysis to identify gene networks that mediate both fixed and plastic differences between coral colonies of the species Acropora hyacinthus in susceptibility to coral bleaching, the stress-induced breakdown of coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis. In the second chapter, I show that variation in gene expression within and between marine populations, including coral, abalone, mussels, and urchins, is often related to variation in the frequencies of genetic variants that change the expression of the allele on which they are found. In the third chapter, I show that persistent differences in the frequencies of genetic variants that cause changes in gene expression and protein sequence in stress-related genes are associated with the evolution of increased bleaching resilience in a cryptic lineage of Acropora hyacinthus. In the fourth chapter, I use low-coverage whole-genome re-sequencing of 114 coral colonies to identify "supergenes, " or closely linked co-inherited sets of multiple genes, that were associated with differences in bleaching outcomes during the third global bleaching event within and between cryptic species of Acropora hyacinthus. Taken as a whole, this thesis demonstrates the existence of high levels of functional diversity spread across contemporary environmental mosaics, and suggests that this diversity will play a critical role in assessing and managing the responses of populations to rapid anthropogenic change.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Rose, Noah Hartmann |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology. |
| Primary advisor | Palumbi, Stephen R |
| Thesis advisor | Palumbi, Stephen R |
| Thesis advisor | Fraser, Hunter B |
| Thesis advisor | Petrov, Dmitri Alex, 1969- |
| Thesis advisor | Sherlock, Gavin |
| Advisor | Fraser, Hunter B |
| Advisor | Petrov, Dmitri Alex, 1969- |
| Advisor | Sherlock, Gavin |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Noah Hartmann Rose. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Noah Hartmann Rose
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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