Adaptation to Climate Change

Can we understand and mitigate the impacts of climate change in time to sustain life on this planet?

The twin dilemmas of climate change and biodiversity loss are intertwined, and leaders in our areas of expertise increasingly recognize that humanity cannot successfully address these threats in isolation.

At the same time, technological and conceptual advances are driving a major transition in our understanding of biodiversity. The past several decades have reframed the science beyond the classical treatment of species diversity, now examining genetic and functional diversity as well—studying not only a “who is there?” but also “what potential do they have for adaptation?” and “what role might they play in ecosystems?"

The accessibility of ‘proteomics, metabolomics, and gene editing tools is pushing these boundaries even further, challenging us to explore the diversity that can hide within the genome and may “buy time” for species facing rapid change, as well as the nature of symbiotic relationships that may rapidly alter organisms’ function as the environment changes. Such investigations are of intense interest both in basic biology and in conservation applications, linking our knowledge from across scales from the molecular to the global.