Impacts of climate-driven evolution on plant-soil interactions and ecosystem functioning

气候驱动的进化对植物-土壤相互作用和生态系统功能的影响

• 批准号: NE/P013392/1
• 负责人: Raj Whitlock
• 金额: $ 53.5万
• 依托单位: University of Liverpool
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FP013392%2F1
• 关键词: Impacts; climate; driven; evolution; plant

Globally, we depend on grasslands to support biodiversity, ensure agricultural productivity, offer recreational areas, and provide a wide range of other valuable ecosystem services; e.g. the UK dairy industry depends on grasslands and is worth ~£4.27 billion per annum. At the same time, grasslands are among the most altered and least protected biomes, and will inevitably be subjected to the imminent effects of climate changes: warming, drought, flooding.Organisms within grasslands may ultimately cope with climate change by adapting; either through evolution, where environmental change selects for individuals whose genes encode advantageous characteristics, or by reversible ("plastic") changes in physiology or growth pattern. Only evolution leads to lasting adaptive change. Thus, evolution has the potential to buffer populations against the adverse effects of climate change. However, the wider effects of evolutionary change, on coexisting species within ecosystems, and on important ecosystem functions, such as nutrient cycling, remain unresolved. "Grasslands", for instance, may seem to be composed of just plants, but beneath the surface there is a thriving microbial community (bacteria and fungi) that interacts with plants to influence the diversity and productivity of the vegetation, plant nutrition, and even evolution. With their rapid generation times and massive populations, these microbes evolve rapidly under pressures such as climate change. Consequently, to understand climate-driven impacts in grasslands, it is essential to integrate the effects of evolutionary and ecological processes that occur both above-, and belowground.Our research will address these pressing issues, by placing climate-driven evolutionary change in an appropriate ecological context. For over two decades, we have exposed a natural UK grassland near Buxton to simulated climate change (warming, increased rainfall, and drought). Our published and preliminary research shows that simulated climate change has already altered plant and microbial communities and has driven evolutionary change within plants. Building on these previous findings, our overarching goal is to use the Buxton climate change experiment to determine how above- and belowground communities co-evolve, and interact with each other during climate change, to shape ecosystem processes. In doing so, we aim to understand changes in the services that grasslands provide, and offer the means to predict and manage these changes. We have designed a cohesive set of experiments to examine key issues at levels ranging from genes to ecosystem responses, using laboratory microcosms, growth-chamber experiments, and field manipulations. Over three years, we will: i) examine two ecologically important microbe species from the field site to determine how long-term climate change treatments drive evolution; ii) use microcosms that include microbes and plants to understand how microbial adaptation affects plant fitness and ecosystem function; iii) determine how evolutionary change in plants, in turn, alters microbial species in the soil. We will use a wide range of techniques to reach these goals, from genome sequencing, to identify the genetic basis of evolutionary change in soil microbes, to respiration measurements, to understand how evolution changes the way ecosystems "breathe". Our research will provide a unique, evolutionary view of how plants and soil organisms respond together to climate change, and of resulting shifts in ecosystem-level processes.

在全球范围内，我们支持生物多样性，确保农业生产力，提供娱乐场所，并提供各种宝贵的生态系统服务；是最受欢迎和最不受保护的生物群落之一，不可避免地会遭受气候变化的迫在眉睫的影响：温暖，干旱，洪水泛滥。草原内部的原则可能会通过适应来应对气候变化；基因编码有利的特征，或者通过可逆的（“塑料”）的生长模式变化在生态系统中共存的物种和重要的生态系统功能G上，尚未解决的“草地”似乎是仅仅是植物，但是表面tre是一种刺激的微生物群落（Bactteria and Fungi）为了影响植被统治的差异和生产率，安德蒂尔快速生成时代和大量种群，微生物迅速进化的压力变化了变化，以了解草原的气候驱动的影响，这是整合发生的进化和生态的ES。 - 和地下。我们的研究将通过将气候驱动的进化旅馆安置为AN AN，以解决这些紧迫的ISSEES。 ，DRUT）。草原提供的服务，并提供这些变化，并使用实验室缩影，增长室实验和现场操作，以检查从基因到生态系统响应的关键问题。我们将：i）i）田间确定长期的气候变化如何发展；从基因组测序中实现这些目标的广泛技术，以识别进化式静置微生物的遗传基础，到呼吸测量“呼吸”。变化，以及生态系统级过程的变化。

项目成果

Adaptation to chronic drought modifies soil microbial community responses to phytohormones.

• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02037-w
• 发表时间: 2021-05-03
• 期刊: Communications biology
• 影响因子: 5.9
• 作者: Sayer EJ;Crawford JA;Edgerley J;Askew AP;Hahn CZ;Whitlock R;Dodd IC
• 通讯作者: Dodd IC