An (epi)genetic study of a complex life cycle in a warming world: gene expression patterns across metamorphosis in a damselfly

Global temperatures are rapidly rising and species traits are changing to better cope with warming. Species can adjust to warming in a plastic manner or in a genetic manner, yet the contribution of both processes to respond to recent global warming is not clear. Most animals, including damselflies that heavily react to global warming, have a life cycle with a larval stage separated from the adult stage by metamorphosis. These different life stages may inhabit different thermal microhabitats, generating different responses to global warming. The general objective of my project is therefore to advance the knowledge of thermal adaptation and thermal plasticity in animals with a complex life cycle to better understand current and future phenotypic responses to global warming. To this end, I will study Ischnura elegans damselflies from thermally differentiated populations along a latitudinal gradient, which I will experimentally expose to different temperatures in a common environment. I will compare their gene expression patterns both in the larval and in the adult stage and identify genes that are differentially expressed due to a plastic response and due to genetic adaptation. Next, I will screen for environmentally-induced, non-genetic mechanisms contributing to these differences in gene expression across metamorphosis as well as for genetic variation in regulatory regions associated with differentially expressed genes.