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.

亚马逊雨林是许多植物物种的家园。科学家已经想知道为什么有些人如此稀有而有些如此普遍。也许有些更好地保护自己免受昆虫和疾病的侵害。这些物种可能会变得异常普遍。植物如何保护自己？大多数人制作特殊的化学物质，可能是对天然敌人（主要是真菌和昆虫）的潜在防御。科学家认为，这种化学物质在非常常见的物种中可能尤其重要，因为如果没有额外的保护，昆虫和真菌疾病将在茂密的人群中迅速扩散。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不被敌人淹没。更普遍地，它可以解释不同地方不同物种的抽象。这项研究还将测试植物化学物质作为对土壤病原体的防御作用，这很重要，但知之甚少。该项目的数据有可能生成新的医疗和农业应用。该项目将在三所大学中参与并涉及低收入，第一代高中学生和本科生。最后，这些大学的学生将与秘鲁和巴西的学生一起参加热带现场生物学课程，并学习如何进行雨林研究。该项目将集中于protium（Burseraceae），这是新热带树的常见和多样化的属。假设具有更多多样性和有效防御性的抗雄性防御能力的蛋白质物种具有较小的密度依赖性死亡率，获得了强大的竞争优势，应在局部和地区范围内转化为较大的人群。在实验室中，代谢组方法将评估植物二次代谢产物在叶片和蛋白质与DNA测序同时的多样性，以确定这些代谢产物如何影响真菌病原体的存在，从而阐明它们在介导植物 - 自然敌人相互作用中的作用。在该领域，观察和实验方法的结合将确定这些植物防御性 - 埃米人的相互作用，并量化其对宿主植物物种抽象的影响以及本地和地区丰富的分类单元逃避负密度依赖性相互作用的能力。该实验组成部分将在秘鲁Iquitos的森林储备中进行，其中长期合作者和国际机构合作伙伴的永久地块是通过以前的NSF项目建立的。为了调查化学多样性如何影响亚马逊盆地的物种丰度的大规模模式，该项目还将在秘鲁，哥伦比亚和巴西大区域进行系统调查，以确定化学和植物自然敌人社区如何在物种范围内变化。结果该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为值得NSF的法定任务，并且被认为值得在高度多样性热带雨林中确定稀有性和共同点的生态过程。通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响评估标准通过评估来支持。

项目成果

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

• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.9198
• 发表时间: 2022-08-01
• 期刊: ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
• 影响因子: 2.6
• 作者: Maynard，Lauren D.;Moureau，Elodie;Whitehead，Susan R.
• 通讯作者: Whitehead，Susan R.