As the climate changes, longer, warmer growing seasons are likely to select for adjustments to physiology and developmental timing. The Weis Lab is investigating the shifting structure of selection regimes, and plant evolutionary responses to them. Much of our work focuses on flowering phenology, an ecologically-important trait that also structures plant mating pools.
Some of our projects use the Experimental Climate Warming Array, located at the Koffler Scientific Reserve, to evaluate the relative importance of growth performance versus flowering phenology on plant fitness.
We are also involved in Project Baseline, an effort that has recently collected, frozen and stored seed from multiple wild populations of 65 plant species. Over the next 50 years, these ancestral seeds will be resurrected, and grown side by side with descendent generations to monitor ongoing evolution.