Collaborative Research: Do defenses against herbivores and pathogens drive the commonness and rarity of tropical trees at local and regional scales?

合作研究：对食草动物和病原体的防御是否会导致当地和区域范围内热带树木的常见性和稀有性？

• 批准号: 1952718
• 负责人: Diego Salazar
• 金额: $ 32.65万
• 依托单位: Florida International University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-15 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1952718&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Do; defenses; against

The Amazon rainforest is home to a huge number of plant species. Scientists have wondered for a long time why some are so rare and others so common. Perhaps some are better at protecting themselves from insects and diseases. These species could then become unusually common. How do plants protect themselves? Most make special chemicals that can be a potent defense against natural enemies (mostly fungus and insects). Scientists think such chemicals may be especially important in very common species because without extra protection, insects and fungal diseases would spread rapidly in dense populations. This project will test whether plant chemicals can explain how the most common rainforest trees keep from being overwhelmed by their enemies. More generally, it may explain the abundance of different species in different places. This study will also test the role of plant chemicals as defenses against soil pathogens, which are important but poorly known. Data from this project has the potential to generate new medical and agricultural applications. The project will engage and involve low income, first-generation high school students and undergraduates at three universities. Finally, students at those universities will gain essential skills by attending a tropical field biology course with students from Peru and Brazil, and will learn how to do rainforest research. This project will focus on Protium (Burseraceae), a common and diverse genus of Neotropical trees. Protium species with more diverse and effective anti-enemy defenses are hypothesized to suffer less density-dependent mortality, gaining a strong competitive advantage that should translate into larger populations at the local and regional scale. In the laboratory, metabolomic approaches will assess the diversity of plant secondary metabolites in leaves and roots of Protium in tandem with DNA sequencing to identify how those metabolites influence the presence of fungal pathogens, thus elucidating their role in mediating plant-natural enemy interactions. In the field, a combination of observational and experimental approaches will identify these plant-defense-enemy interactions and quantify their effect on host plant species abundances and the ability of locally and regionally abundant taxa to escape negative density-dependent interactions. This experimental component will be conducted in forest reserves in Iquitos, Peru where permanent plots by long-term collaborators and international institutional partners have been established through previous NSF projects. To investigate how chemical diversity might affect large scale patterns of species abundances in the Amazon basin, this project will also perform systematic surveys across large areas in Peru, Colombia and Brazil to determine how chemistry and plant natural enemy communities change across species’ ranges. Results will provide a critical test of specific chemically-mediated mechanisms thought to control plant-natural enemy interactions, and thus a newly emerging hypothesis about the ecological processes that determine rarity and commonness in high diversity tropical rainforests. Ultimately, this research will yield a deeper understanding of the processes underlying the origin and maintenance of the vast biodiversity of tropical forests.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

亚马逊雨林是大量植物物种的家园，长期以来，科学家们一直想知道为什么有些植物如此稀有，而另一些植物却如此常见。也许有些植物能够更好地保护自己免受昆虫和疾病的侵害。植物如何保护自己？大多数植物会产生特殊的化学物质，可以有效防御天敌（主要是真菌和昆虫）。科学家认为，这些化学物质对于非常常见的物种可能特别重要，因为如果没有额外的保护，昆虫和真菌疾病就会迅速传播。在人口稠密的地方。该项目将测试植物化学物质是否可以解释最常见的雨林树木如何避免被天敌淹没。更广泛地说，它可以解释不同地方不同物种的丰富程度。这项研究还将测试植物化学物质作为防御作用的作用。该项目的数据很重要但鲜为人知，该项目将吸引三所大学的低收入第一代高中生和本科生。在这些大学将通过参加热带生物学课程获得基本技能与来自秘鲁和巴西的学生一起参加课程，并将学习如何进行雨林研究，该项目将重点关注氕树（Burseraceae），这是一种常见且多样化的新热带树种，旨在寻求更多样化和更有效的抗敌防御能力。密度依赖性死亡率较低，获得强大的竞争优势，应转化为当地和区域规模的更大种群。在实验室中，代谢组学方法将评估 Protium 叶和根中植物次生代谢物的多样性。与DNA测序相结合，以确定这些代谢物如何影响真菌病原体的存在，从而阐明它们在介导植物-天敌相互作用中的作用。在现场，观察和实验方法的结合将识别这些植物-防御-天敌相互作用并量化。它们对寄主植物物种丰度以及当地和区域丰富的类群逃避负密度依赖性相互作用的能力的影响该实验部分将在秘鲁伊基托斯的森林保护区中进行，那里由长期合作者和国际机构进行永久合作。为了调查化学多样性如何影响亚马逊流域物种丰度的大范围模式，该项目还将在秘鲁、哥伦比亚和巴西的大片地区进行系统调查，以确定化学和植物自然的关系。结果将为控制植物与天敌相互作用的特定化学介导机制提供关键测试，从而提供关于决定高度多样性热带雨林稀有性和常见性的生态过程的新假设。最终，这项研究将带来更深入的了解该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Effects of climate change on plant resource allocation and herbivore interactions in a Neotropical rainforest shrub

气候变化对新热带雨林灌木植物资源分配和食草动物相互作用的影响

• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.9198
• 发表时间: 2022-08
• 期刊: Ecology and Evolution
• 影响因子: 2.6
• 作者: Maynard, Lauren D.;Moureau, Elodie;Bader, Maaike Y.;Salazar, Diego;Zotz, Gerhard;Whitehead, Susan R.
• 通讯作者: Whitehead, Susan R.