On a steep rock above the Gorner Glacier, the wood pink (Dianthus sylvestris) grows where seasons change with altitude. In a place like that, timing isn’t a detail—it’s basically survival. And Misryoum newsroom reporting and editorial team stated that a new study is pointing to something older than the current warming trend: ancient genetic variants that help the plant “choose” when to flower.
The species is widespread across the Alps, usually between 800 and 2,400 meters. Misryoum newsroom reported that the study, published in Science, identified adaptive cold and warm alleles that adjust flowering time to match the conditions at a plant’s altitude. With melting glaciers reshaping life on mountainsides, those alleles may give the perennials a head start against warmer temperatures—though, of course, nothing about adaptation is guaranteed.
Led by Simone Fior at the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich, the work compared three wood pink populations from valley regions with three from mountain areas in Valais, the Swiss canton that contains the largest number of glaciers in the country. Misryoum editorial desk noted that the populations behave differently: lower-elevation plants, where snow melts earlier, tend to flower in May and have a longer growing season. Higher-altitude plants, facing later snowmelt and a shorter summer, blossom immediately after the snow melts so they can make it through the season.
What controls that difference, according to the researchers, is a gene called DsCEN/2. Misryoum newsroom reported that the team identified two variants of this gene concentrated in wood pink populations at different elevations. Hirzi Luqman, a postdoctoral fellow in population genetics at Cambridge University and a co-author, explained to Misryoum that “CEN is a key regulator of flowering time in many plants.” Different species, he said, carry different homologs and variants (alleles) that fit their ecology, genetics, and evolutionary history.
In the study’s framing, the “warm” allele is found in plants from warmer valley regions. Misryoum analysis indicates it supports later flowering, giving the plants more time to grow and build up biomass before producing seeds. The “cold” allele, common in colder higher-altitude populations, shortens the growth period and pushes flowering right after snowmelt—an approach that helps seeds mature before winter, matching the region’s shorter frost-free window.
Then comes the part that sounds almost like a biological memory. Misryoum editorial team stated that both alleles have ancient origins and were present in the earlier species from which the wood pink developed. By investigating genes from related species, the researchers found the alleles even in very distantly related Dianthus species, and Misryoum newsroom reporting notes the gene variant did not arise from mutation inside the wood pink itself, but instead in other species of the Dianthus genus. Misryoum analysis indicates that multiple Dianthus species formed around 1 to 3 million years ago, during Earth’s alternating glacial and interglacial periods—so the genetic setup may have been shaped by past climate swings.
Misryoum newsroom reported that Dorothy M. Peteet, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and paleoclimatologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Misryoum that plant adaptive capabilities to climate are sometimes remarkable, probably because they have survived through previous cycles of climate change. Still, Misryoum editorial desk noted that rising temperatures and glacier loss are restructuring mountain ecosystems, shifting high-altitude habitats toward warmer, drier conditions. That threatens plant biodiversity, and may push some species toward extinction if they can’t adapt quickly enough.
The study’s tone, though, isn’t purely grim. Luqman told Misryoum that certain species, like the wood pink, may fare better than others because their genomes contain pre-adapted alleles that facilitate survival under a broad range of climates. Since CEN is a key regulatory gene in many plant species, he said it’s possible—and potentially very likely—that climate adaptation via shifts in flowering time, as mediated by alleles, happens across different plant species. And with climate change happening faster than adaptation rates, Luqman’s message to Misryoum was basically that most plant and animal species will need to lean on pre-existing genetic variation.
Outside, the air can feel sharp up on the alpine slope—there’s a kind of clean, metallic chill when you stop for a second and look out. The glaciers move or don’t, the snow melts earlier or later. Either way, this work suggests that some plants already carry genetic options from old environmental battles, and that those options might matter more as today’s changes keep coming—though exactly how much they’ll help, and for whom, is still the question we’re left with.
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