The tempo of adaptation to agriculture across timescales in weeds and crops
Dr. Julia Kreiner, University of Chicago
Abstract: Genomic time-series data from natural and cultivated populations are increasingly being recovered from herbarium and archeological records. These resources provide the opportunity to directly observe evolution in progress over unprecedented timescales, from decades, to centuries, and millennia, as well as quantify how quickly changing environments drive genomic responses. I will discuss how carefully curated herbarium genomic data has allowed us to observe demographic shifts and the strength of selection on modern, agriculturally-associated alleles in response to two centuries of agricultural intensification, in a problematic weed, Amaranthus tuberculatus. I will then show how a parallel approach can be applied to ancient sunflower genomes spanning the last 5000 years, to quantify the tempo of domestication and quantify the impact of demographic change on these artificially selective trajectories.