Nature Communications (Mar 2020)

Locally-adapted reproductive photoperiodism determines population vulnerability to climate change in burying beetles

  • Hsiang-Yu Tsai,
  • Dustin R. Rubenstein,
  • Yu-Meng Fan,
  • Tzu-Neng Yuan,
  • Bo-Fei Chen,
  • Yezhong Tang,
  • I-Ching Chen,
  • Sheng-Feng Shen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15208-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

Read online

Understanding whether intraspecific trait variation results from local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity is crucial to predict species responses to climate change. Here the authors investigate geographically distinct burying beetle populations, showing that photoperiodism is a locally adapted, not phenotypically plastic, trait.