Climate-driven niche tracking and genomic resilience shape future distribution of a widespread agricultural weed

Revealing the abiotic and biotic drivers of past and future local adaptation in a coastal dogwhelk

Predicting whether populations can persist under rapid environmental change requires identifying the ecological drivers of local adaptation, uncovering their genetic bases, and understanding how adaptive variation will respond to future selection. Here, we combine landscape genomics, environmental data, and evolutionary simulations to identify the selective forces shaping adaptation across 1,500 km of the west coast of North America in the low-dispersing coastal dogwhelk Nucella canaliculata, determine their genomic bases, and forecast future evolutionary responses. We found strong associations of genome-wide variation with both abiotic (i.e., mean pH) and biotic variation (i.e., cross-sectional shell thickness of the mussel prey species, Mytilus californianus). These patterns are underlain by two large-effect loci, including a biomineralization gene associated with pH tolerance and a locus near a thiamine transporter associated with prey shell thickness. Genomic offset analyses and population genetic simulations further predict that ongoing ocean acidification will disrupt existing adaptive patterns and generate maladaptation in high latitude populations, with evolutionary outcomes strongly influenced by gene flow, which determines the rate at which adaptive alleles spread across the species range. Together, these findings reveal how biotic and abiotic selective pressures shape adaptive genomic variation and provide a framework for forecasting evolutionary responses to future global change.

Drought-Resilient Crops for Sustainable Agriculture: Genetic, Physiological, and Agronomic Advances

Drought constitutes one of the most pervasive abiotic constraints limiting global crop productivity, with its frequency and intensity projected to increase substantially under ongoing climate change. This narrative review synthesises contemporary evidence on the genetic, physiological, and agronomic dimensions of drought resilience in major food crops, drawing on peer-reviewed literature published primarily between 2000 and 2026. Physiologically, drought impairs stomatal conductance, suppresses photosynthetic carbon assimilation, disturbs osmotic equilibrium, and restricts root-mediated water acquisition, with reproductive stages being disproportionately vulnerable. At the genetic level, the deployment of quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, transcription-factor engineering, CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, and the overexpression of stress-responsive functional genes has opened novel avenues for enhancing tolerance without compromising yield potential. Breeding programmes have increasingly integrated marker-assisted selection (MAS) and genomic selection to accelerate genetic gain, whilst high-throughput phenotyping platforms now enable rapid assessment of drought-adaptive traits at a population scale. Agronomic strategies, including deficit irrigation, conservation tillage, intercropping, and application of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), provide complementary levers for sustaining productivity under water-limited conditions. Emerging integrative approaches that combine multi-omics, digital precision agriculture, and policy-enabled climate-smart frameworks are highlighted as critical pathways for translating laboratory and field insights into scalable solutions. The review identifies persistent knowledge gaps—including the limited translation of genomic advances to smallholder contexts and the underexplored potential of microbiome engineering—and calls for a convergence of disciplinary expertise, equitable technology transfer, and coherent policy support to achieve drought-resilient food systems globally.

Polygenic adaptation from standing variation underlies rapid evolution under anthropogenic selection in an agricultural weed

From Reproduction to Resilience: New Frameworks for Managing Crop Diversity.

Plant breeding has progressed from phenotype-based selection to increasingly precise genetic and agronomic interventions. Advances in molecular breeding, genome engineering, and crop management have improved productivity, but have also promoted the widespread use of genetically uniform cultivars optimized for controlled production systems. While uniformity facilitates predictability and mechanization, it may constrain adaptive capacity under increasingly variable environmental conditions. In parallel, recent developments in digital agriculture, including high-resolution phenotyping, remote-sensing, molecular diagnostics, and AI-assisted decision support, are transforming the ability to monitor and manage biological variation across spatial and temporal scales. In this review, we examine how these technological advances intersect with emerging concepts in crop diversity and reproductive biology. We discuss how digital agriculture enables improved characterization of genotype-environment interactions and consider reproductive mechanisms that expand the accessible breeding space beyond conventional biparental crossing schemes, including haploid induction and multi-parental breeding. These approaches provide opportunities to accelerate trait introgression, generate novel genetic combinations, and overcome reproductive barriers. We argue that digital and diagnostic agriculture provide an informational framework for the deployment and evaluation of genetically heterogeneous plant populations. Together, recent advances suggest that technological precision and biological diversity can be integrated into breeding strategies that improve productivity and resilience.

Integrating ensemble species distribution modeling and ecological niche dynamics to assess climate-driven distributional changes of two major forest pests (Anoplophora chinensis and Anoplophora glabripennis) in China

Stem-boring pests are increasingly affected by climate-driven environmental changes, which can alter their distribution patterns and pose growing threats to forest ecosystems. This study aims to assess the potential distributional shifts and ecological niche dynamics of two economically important longhorn beetles native to China, Anoplophora chinensis and Anoplophora glabripennis , under current climatic conditions and future climate scenarios (2050s: 2041–2060; 2090s: 2081–2100), thereby providing a framework for climate-driven pest risk assessment. Our ensemble modelling approach showed high predictive performance for both species, with AUC values exceeding 0.97 and TSS values above 0.84. The mean diurnal range (Bio2) and the mean temperature of the wettest quarter (Bio8) were identified as the most influential variables for the distributions of A. chinensis and A. glabripennis , respectively. Climate change projections indicate that climatically suitable habitats for both species are likely to expand, although the extent of habitat overlap is projected to decrease substantially, potentially reducing spatial co-occurrence and promoting greater ecological differentiation between the two species. Niche analyses further revealed that the current Schoener’s D and Hellinger’s I values between the two species are 0.41 and 0.59, respectively, indicating a moderate level of niche overlap. Moreover, the hypervolume of A. glabripennis was larger than that of A. chinensis , indicating occupation of a broader climatic niche characterized by a wider range of temperature and precipitation conditions, which may reflect greater ecological flexibility. These findings suggest potential climate-driven divergence in the spatial distributions and ecological niches of the two species, highlighting the need for species-specific monitoring and management strategies under future climate change and providing valuable guidance for surveillance planning and quarantine prioritization in emerging risk areas.

Local Adaptation to Current but Not Future Climate in Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests: Population Genomic Evidence in a Neotropical Legume Tree

Neotropical seasonally dry biomes are amongst the world's most threatened ecosystems and are predicted to lose more biodiversity with climate change. The capacity of natural populations to respond to these changes depends on their genetic variation, but is poorly understood in most Neotropical seasonally dry forest species. Here, we used genome‐wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data for 109 individuals across 12 Colombian populations of Enterolobium cyclocarpum, a widespread deciduous legume tree found in seasonally dry tropical forests, human‐disturbed and open landscapes from Central and Northern South America, to (1) explore population structure across the landscape, (2) determine local adaptation to heat and drought stress, and (3) assess genomic offset and adaptive potential under future climate change. Our results suggest clear genomic differentiation among regions and populations, as well as an uneven spatial distribution of adaptive alleles associated with drought and heat stress, together suggesting different degrees of local adaptation to climate across the landscape. Furthermore, all regions investigated (i.e., Caribbean, inter‐Andean valleys, and Orinoquía) showed limited adaptive potential under future climate change scenarios. For some regions, gene flow may help buffer the effects of environmental change by bringing in adaptive alleles, however, this will likely be insufficient to counteract predicted mal‐adaptation in certain regions, such as in the Orinoquía. Our results suggest that both barriers to gene flow (e.g., orography) and varying heat and drought stress conditions have shaped the genomic composition and adaptive potential of the species. Enterolobium cyclocarpum populations have adapted locally to current climate, but this adaptation may not be sufficient to cope with future climate change, particularly where population connectivity is low. Our findings have relevance for the conservation of species in highly threatened Neotropical biomes, such as seasonally dry tropical forests, which are expected to experience rising temperatures and greater drought under future climate change.