Amanda De La Torre
Northern Arizona University, AZ·Plant Science & Agriculture·Early-career
Hotter temperatures and more frequent heat waves threaten the growth and survival of commercial tree species. In long-lived trees such as Douglas fir, management decisions made today shape forest productivity for the next 50–100 years.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Genetics
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
Douglas fir
Pseudotsuga menziesii
conifers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Test whether hybrids between coastal and interior Douglas fir varieties show greater drought tolerance and growth than their parents, using physiological studies of pure varieties, F1, F2 and advanced-generation hybrids.
- Track temporal and transgenerational genomic and epigenomic changes caused by hybridization, combining genome, epigenome (gene-control marks) and expression data across hybrid generations.
- Dissect the molecular basis of heterosis (hybrid vigor) and transgressive segregation, where offspring exceed parental traits, and judge whether adaptive introgression explains hybrid drought tolerance.
More about the research
One open question is whether crossing tree varieties (hybridization) can help them adapt to a changing climate. Hybridization can cause widespread changes to the genome and to the epigenome, the chemical marks that control which genes are switched on. Some of these changes may pass to later generations.
Why it matters
Coastal Douglas fir is an important timber tree, but warming is expected to reduce its growth because it tolerates drought poorly. Knowing which genetic and epigenetic changes give hybrids their extra drought tolerance and growth could help foresters and breeders choose trees for the hotter, drier conditions expected over the next century of forest management.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
James Birchler
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Genetics
Test whether shifts in how often McClintock's tiny fragment chromosome is inherited stem from genome rearrangements caused by its X component, mapping them with whole chromosome painting and DNA sequencing.
Troy Ocheltree
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Plant Science & Agriculture
Identify the networks of linked physiological traits that produce different drought-coping strategies in grasses, using a set of species that spans the entire grass family (Poaceae).
Xinjun Zhang
University of Michigan, MI·Genetics
Develop machine learning methods to detect archaic introgression from unknown 'ghost' archaic humans in East Asian genomes.
The school
Northern Arizona University: 4 labs on PI Pages, $94M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
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