Climate change poses critical challenges for population persistence in natural communities, agriculture and environmental sustainability, and food security. In this review, we discuss recent progress in climatic adaptation in plants. We evaluate whether climate change exerts novel selection and disrupts local adaptation, whether gene flow can facilitate adaptive responses to climate change, and if adaptive phenotypic plasticity could sustain populations in the short term. Furthermore, we discuss how climate change influences species interactions. Through a more in-depth understanding of these eco-evolutionary dynamics, we will increase our capacity to predict the adaptive potential of plants under climate change. In addition, we review studies that dissect the genetic basis of plant adaptation to climate change. Finally, we highlight key research gaps, ranging from validating gene function, to elucidating molecular mechanisms, expanding research systems from model species to other natural species, testing the fitness consequences of alleles in natural environments, and designing multifactorial studies that more closely reflect the complex and interactive effects of multiple climate change factors. By leveraging interdisciplinary tools (e.g., cutting-edge omics toolkits, novel ecological strategies, newly-developed genome editing technology), researchers can more accurately predict the probability that species can persist through this rapid and intense period of environmental change, as well as cultivate crops to withstand climate change, and conserve biodiversity in natural systems.

Although mountain ranges are often recognized as global biodiversity hotspots with a high level of endemism, diversity and biogeographic connections of isolated and weakly explored mountains remain poorly understood. This is also the case for Shirkuh Mts. in central Iran. Here, gen. & spec. nov. (Caryophylleae, Caryophyllaceae) is described and illustrated from the high alpine zone of this mountain. Molecular phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and plastid DNA sequence data show that is related to and (tribe Caryophylleae). The newly described genus and species accentuate Shirkuh Mts. as a center of endemism, which harbors a high number of narrowly distributed species, mostly in high elevations reaching alpine habitats. As this area is currently not protected, a conservation priority is highlighted for high elevations of Shirkuh Mts.

Truncated receptor ectodomains have been described for several classes of cell surface receptors, including those that bind to growth factors, cytokines, immunoglobulins, and adhesion molecules. Soluble receptor isoforms are typically generated by proteolytic cleavage of the cell surface receptor or by alternative splicing of RNA transcripts arising from the same gene encoding the full-length receptor. Both the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the insulin receptor (INSR) families produce soluble receptor splice variants in vertebrates and truncated forms of insulin receptor-like sequences have previously been described in . The EGFR and INSR ectodomains share significant sequence homology with each other suggestive of a common evolutionary origin. We discovered novel truncated insulin receptor-like variants in several arthropod species. We performed a phylogenetic analysis of the conserved extracellular receptor L1 and L2 subdomains in invertebrate species. While the segregation of insulin receptor-like L1 and L2 domains indicated that an internal domain duplication had occurred only once, the generation of truncated insulin receptor-like sequences has occurred multiple times. The significance of this work is the previously unknown and widespread occurrence of truncated isoforms in arthropods, signifying that these isoforms play an important functional role, potentially related to such isoforms in mammals.

Dissecting evolutionary dynamics of ecologically important traits is a long-term challenge for biologists. Attempts to understand natural variation and molecular mechanisms have motivated a move from laboratory model systems to non-model systems in diverse natural environments. Next generation sequencing methods, along with an expansion of genomic resources and tools, have fostered new links between diverse disciplines, including molecular biology, evolution, and ecology, and genomics. Great progress has been made in a few non-model wild plants, such as Arabidopsis relatives, monkey flowers, and wild sunflowers. Until recently, the lack of comprehensive genomic information has limited evolutionary and ecological studies to larger QTL regions rather than single gene resolution, and has hindered recognition of general patterns of natural variation and local adaptation. Further efforts in accumulating genomic data and developing bioinformatic and biostatistical tools are now poised to move this field forward. Integrative national and international collaborations and research communities are needed to facilitate development in the field of evolutionary and ecological genomics.