The Genomic and Evolutionary Basis of Forest Trees Adaptation to Changing Environments

Dear Colleagues,

In this Special Issue, we aim to collect submissions reporting on the discovery, measurement, annotation, functional characterization, and deposition of research on the state of the art in the genomic and evolutionary basis of forest tree adaptation to changing environments, including transcriptomics. Although genomic data on the evolutionary basis of forest tree adaptation to changing environments are increasingly being relied upon, such data still require more visibility.
Forest trees are unique among living beings. Forest trees are long living, large, and motionless and are constantly exposed to climate variations in both time and geographic location. Long-living trees in particular have evolved a wide spectrum of molecular mechanisms to coordinate growth and development under stressful conditions, thus minimizing fitness costs. Forests also directly affect the local climate by interacting with the biogeochemical water cycle.

Seed production in forest trees, a key aspect for evolution and adaptation, varies as a rule from year to year, ranging from heavy to negligible, and population effective size is in general inferior to the population census. During the long life of a forest tree, which can be centuries or even millennia for some species, they must cope with environmental changes without the chance to migrate in search of suitable conditions elsewhere. Short-living plants face adverse environmental changes mainly by producing large amounts of seed, which is an indirect process of migration.

Gene flow by means of pollen and seeds is a critical process in long-living forest species. Natural cloning and hybridization occur in various genera and certainly also play a role in evolution and adaptation. Through hybridization, two species of the same genus produce hybrids that can explore the environment and, at the limit, create new species. However, such hybridization, even among highly compatible species, generally succeeds in keeping both species individualized, which raises the issue of genomic control.

Over the course of evolution, the way forest trees use their genomes (inherited genes) to cope and evolve remains to be fully understood. Understanding how forest trees respond to different stresses is fundamental to developing a successful strategy to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem functionality and strategies for genetic improvement and reforestation. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing and biochemical approaches allow for the understanding of the adaptive responses of woody plants to drought, temperature, co-evolution with biotic stresses with special attention to pests and diseases, and inter-specific competition in a context of global climate change. Genomic and transcriptomic findings on the response of forest trees to alien pathogenic agents are increasingly becoming critical issues.

This Special Issue of Plants will address questions concerning the link between genomics and issues such as the following:

• Phenotypic plasticity;
• Epigenetics;
• Pests and diseases;
• Genomic regulation of reproductive behavior;
• Genotype–environment interaction;
• Population genomics;
• Gene flow by pollen and seeds;
• Hybridization and introgression;
• Provenance characterization;
• Conservation of genetic resources.
  
  Original research articles, reviews, mini reviews, and methods dealing with these topics are welcome

Dr. Maria Carolina Varela
Dr. Rita Lourenço Costa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• forest trees
• epigenetics
• quantitative characteristics
• gene flow
• hybridization
• population genomics
• transcriptomics
• adaptation
• biotic and abiotic stresses
• global climate change