Lucrezia LaccettiLocal adaptation & intraspecific variation
How within- and among-population variation builds adaptive potential, and how the geographic mosaic of biotic and abiotic pressures drives differentiation among populations.
Research
Evolutionary trajectories of Mediterranean plants in a changing world
Research programme
Three questions that guide my work
Plasticity & resilience
Whether adaptive phenotypic plasticity allows plants to colonise novel environments and buffer rapid environmental change within and across generations.
Rapid divergence & reproductive isolation
The early phases of divergence — from the build-up of reproductive barriers to ecotype formation — in rapidly evolving Mediterranean plant complexes.
Central theme
Intraspecific variation
In species with fragmented distributions, populations separated by only a few kilometres often differ consistently in germination requirements, tolerance to abiotic stress, floral phenotype and reproductive success. Common-garden and transplant experiments indicate that a substantial part of this differentiation is heritable and locally adaptive, and genomic analyses associate it with the environmental gradients that select for it. Quantifying this standing variation, and the rate at which selection and phenotypic plasticity can act upon it, is a prerequisite for predicting which populations can track ongoing environmental change and which are likely to decline.
Study systems
Plants I study
Brassica incana
A wild cliff-dwelling crucifer and crop relative — a model for seawater tolerance, germination ecology and genomic adaptation in fragmented populations across coastal and inland cliffs.
Dianthus rupicola
A Mediterranean cliff carnation whose populations are rapidly diverging — a natural laboratory for ecotype formation, postzygotic isolation and genome-size evolution.
Approach
From the field to the genome
My work spans scales and methods. I combine fieldwork, experimental approaches and genomics to understand the evolutionary trajectories of Mediterranean plants.
Principal Investigator
Projects I lead
2026 – 2027 · L'Oréal-UNESCO
How flowering plants cope with rapid shifts in their interacting insect communities
Insect communities are changing faster than the plants that depend on them. This project asks whether wild plants can track that change: how flowers, rewards and reproductive success respond when the pollinators and antagonists visiting a population are replaced, and what this means for the persistence of plant populations under climate change.
L'Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” Award · 20,000 € · Department of Biology, University of Naples Federico II
2022 – 2023 · European Space Agency
Precise monitoring of plant hybrid zones via convolutional neural networks
Where two plant lineages meet, they leave a signature that is visible from above. This project paired high-resolution remote sensing with deep learning to detect and follow contact zones between lineages over areas that field surveys alone cannot cover.
European Space Agency (ESA) · Project PP0085155 · 6,500 € · Co-PIs: G. Scopece, G. Ruello
Networks
Projects in collaboration
2026 – · Comunidad de Madrid
CONCLIFFS
Unravelling evolutionary changes in endemic cliff plants: how long-lived, isolated populations of Iberian cliff endemics respond to climate and land-use change.
Atracción de Talento César Nombela · PI: Martí March-Salas · Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
2026 – · Global initiative
Thermal Ecology Alliance
A globally distributed experiment on thermal strategies in a cosmopolitan plant, testing how one widespread species adjusts to the range of climates it occupies.
Collaborative research initiative
2025 – · National Geographic
Brassica oleracea domestication
Genomic perspectives on domestication and feral diversity in Brassica oleracea, placing my work on wild crucifers in a crop-relative context.
PIs: M. Mabry & S. Abrahams
2025 · PRIN 2022 PNRR
URBANPOLL
Parallel adaptation of plants to urban pollinators: whether plants in different cities converge on the same responses to urban pollinator communities.
Italian Ministry of University and Research · PI: Giovanni Scopece
2025 – · FAPESP, Brazil
Origin of the Ilha de Alcatrazes flora
Ecology and evolution of island plant species, reconstructing how the flora of a Brazilian land-bridge island assembled and diverged.
São Paulo Research Foundation · PI: Fabio Pinheiro
2023 – 2024 · COST Action
ConservePlants
A European network on the conservation of threatened plants, contributing data on the pollinators and flower visitors of threatened European species.
COST Action CA18201
