Meeting Abstract
Temperature plays an important role in shaping the form and function of every species. Ectothermic organisms are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in their thermal environment. Their inability to produce appreciable amounts of heat through physiological mechanisms makes them vulnerable to thermal shifts, and a good system for the study of temperature-mediated evolution. Additionally, in a world of human-accelerated ecosystem change it is increasingly important to understand how temperature influences processes of adaptation and acclimation. The central goal of this work is to understand how temperature shapes the variation within terrestrial ectotherm species. Towards this aim we investigated the effects of cold temperatures on phenotypic and genomic variation of the green anole, Anolis carolinensis After overwater dispersal from Cuba, the species has spread from Florida throughout the southeast to occupy a range of environments as far north as Tennessee and North Carolina and west into Texas and Oklahoma, where environments differ dramatically from that of its ancestral range – particularly during the winter months. We combine niche modeling, geographic surveys of thermal limits, common garden experiments, and several genomic techniques to gain a clearer understanding of how novel environments have shaped the evolutionary trajectory of this species after its colonization of the mainland. Additionally, we explore rapid evolutionary response to a single extreme winter storm (termed the “polar vortex”), which sent arctic winds and snowstorms through the southeast during the winter of 2013-2014.
