Abstract:
The grass family comprise around 12000 species distributed across every terrestrial habitat on Earth. Although the majority of grasses are tropical, a few lineages have successfully diversified within the temperate zone, including Bambusoideae, Danthonioideae, and Pooideae. However, the evolutionary innovations underlying the niche transitions from tropical to temperate regions are poorly understood. We study Pooidea, the grass subfamily that dominates the Northern temperate regions, and combine classical physiological growth experiments with molecular genetic and genomic techniques to study how this subfamily has evolved to cope with strong seasonality, prolonged periods of cold, frost and short growing seasons.