Collaborative research: Evolutionary trade-offs in the adaptation of decomposers to global warming: Implications for ecosystem C balance

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Soil fungi responsible for the decay and recycling of carbon may evolve in response to global warming. This could have serious consequences with respect to global change. This team of investigators posit that warmer temperatures may favor the evolution of fungi that can break down material that is long-lived(?recalcitrant?) in the soil . As a consequence, more greenhouse gases would be released to the atmosphere in a feedback loop that could lead to even warmer temperatures. This issue is particularly urgent in the northern, boreal forests of Alaska, which store large amounts of recalcitrant matter in their soils, and which are warming more rapidly than elsewhere. Research team members will be simulating global warming in such forests and examining its effects on fungi and their degradation activities. In addition, they will be exposing fungi to warming in laboratory experiments that will use genetic and physiological tests to examine how their ability to decompose recalcitrant materials changes over time.Human life cannot exist without fungi to decompose organic matter, since they recycle nutrients from dead organisms for use by plants, animals, and people. This study will provide explicit predictions of the different ways that global warming maybe affecting fungi. It will also be one of the first to examine the evolution of these microbes in response to global warming. In addition, the investigators will train one postdoctoral researcher, two graduate students and several undergraduate researchers, with an emphasis on recruitment of students from underrepresented groups in science. The investigators will also invite students and teachers from a nearby elementary school to participate in day-long mushroom forays and a global change field trip.