Long-term individual-based monitoring of edulis population: individual fitness and future climate predictions.

When starting my PhD in Bielefeld, I joined a great sampling effort previously done by my advisor Joe Hoffman alone. He was sampling every single cep that was growing in small beech wood sites. He also collected the nearest tree’s DBH and the GPS coordinates.

During my third year of the PhD, this was the 9th consecutive year of the sampling. We decided it was time to test what this database could offer in terms of new biological insights.

First, we needed to differentiate the genetically unique individuals. To do this my advisor and William Amos (see collaborators) developped a microsatellite multiplex. Once all the samples sequenced, I developped a program written in C++ and R: GenoPowdimR to differentiate the individuals despite occasional tricky loci.

I ran Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) models to predict individual fruiting according to climate and host carbon allocation variables. INLA models were chosen because they are spatially explicit and powerful with complex data structure and random effects.

…Preprint incoming…