Ecological and Genetic Insights into Seaweeds’ Diversity and Adaptation

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Background

Seaweeds (marine macroalgae) are closely allied to global primary productivity and nutrient cycling, blue economical sustainability, coastal marine environmental regulation and ecosystem services.

Global climate change, anthropogenic interferences, habitat loss and other factors in the past several decades have imposed unparalleled impacts on the diversity, distribution, and ecological performance of seaweeds globally. Consequently, elucidating the patterns, processes and mechanisms associated with seaweeds’ adaptation, evolution and distribution using experimental ecology and evolutionary genetics undoubtedly can provide practical insights for managing, monitoring and preserving seaweeds resources under ongoing climate change.

Ecological processes and intra-specific genetic diversity reciprocally affect each other. However, only a handful of studies have tried to unite ecological and genetic approaches to address the interactive effects between seaweed species and the environment. Such a situation highlights the need to study seaweeds better by incorporating an eco-evolutionary perspective.

The focus of this Research Topic is on studies that use ecological or evolutionary genetic methods, particularly the linkage of both, to explore how seaweeds respond to environmental change. It calls for original and novel papers related to adaptation and diversity of seaweeds in any of the following research topics:

1. The impacts of climate change and other (e.g. acute or chronic) environmental stressors on adaption, distribution, and potentials of seaweeds.
2. The role and mechanism of genetic features for seaweed in response to environmental stress.
3. The role and impact of management strategies on seaweed genetic characteristics.
4. Genomic advancements to understanding underlying diversity and functional differences among species/populations.
5. Interaction between seaweeds and symbiotic microbes in a changing ocean environment.

Keywords: seaweeds, climate change, evolutionary genetics, ecological responses, biodiversity conservation

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