Transcriptomics of thermal stress in the seaweed Fucus serratus, a key foundational species in the North Atlantic intertidal

The rate and absolute magnitude of climate change in the last 150 years is expected to be greater than that of the last four million years and, as such, can be considered a human-mediated and planet-wide experiment in unusually rapid selection. Coastal ec osystems in general, and intertidal systems in particular, are likely to be profoundly affected by climate change because human impacts have already undermined their resilience and capacity to buffer additional environmental stresses. Global environmental change invokes two basic responses of organisms: ecological (dispersal, phenotypic plasticity) and evolutionary (genetic change), both of which are integrated into a "move, be plastic or evolve" strategy. The specific aim of the proposed research is to u nderstand the responses to increasing temperature of the intertidal seaweed Fucus serratus, an ecologically important ecosystem engineer in the North Atlantic rocky intertidal zone using a transcriptomic approach to assess how local adaptation influences modulation of gene expression in response to thermal stress in Fucus serratus trought the visit of Spyros Kollias (Hellenic Centre for Marine Research).