Future adaptations of plant species to environmental changes.

The response of organisms to changing environmental conditions is four-fold: they become extinct, migrate, adapt to new sites with suitable environmental conditions or decline into relictual populations, like tertiary endemics did into Mediterranean flora (1). Quantifying the variation in the ecological and genetic traits of natural plant populations across a species’ geographic range is crucial to our understanding the factors that have shaped current distribution patterns (2) and the processes acting in the maintenance and/or expansion of range limits (3). In this project we will explore the relationship between ecology, floral and genetic polymorphism of Lilium pomponium L. across its wide altitudinal range, from 100 to 2000 m (spanning from Mediterranean to Alpine habitats). The species is a protected endemism of Maritime and Ligurian Alps.