Collaborative Research: IntBio: Defining the mechanisms and consequences of mutualism reorganization in the Anthropocene.

没有有机体是孤立生存的。相反，生命是生物体和环境之间有益而代价高昂的相互作用的网络。然而，人们对这些联系将如何随着全球变化而改变知之甚少。到21世纪末，气候变化将增加年平均气温并改变降水模式。与此同时，入侵物种将覆盖至少17%的地球陆地表面，包括北美大部分地区。植物与地下微生物的联系是地球上最广泛的相互关系之一。这些互惠关系对全球变化也特别敏感。然而，植物-真菌共生如何抵御和适应新环境的机制仍不清楚。因此，关键的问题仍然是：互惠合作伙伴将如何重组并影响互惠合作在未来的功能？回答这个问题需要跨尺度和系统的综合、多学科研究。这项工作将通过跟踪本地植物及其有益和致病真菌对入侵植物Alliaria petiolata（大蒜芥）的有机体、生理、种群和群落反应来创造这些协同效应。该项目将通过为来自不同背景的本科生提供综合研究和培训经验，对下一代STEM劳动力产生教育影响。IntBio项目建立在外来植物入侵的长期实验基础上，以解决四个目标。1：确定与本地植物物种相关的丛枝菌根（AM）和致病真菌群落的长期模式，以及真菌群落如何因入侵而重组。II：确定植物- am真菌共生关系重组如何影响植物生理，包括碳固定和氮吸收。III：确定植物- am真菌相互作用的重组和/或土壤养分有效性改变植物生长、生存和繁殖的程度。通过实验解决这些目标将允许IV：整合前三个目标的结果，从互惠重组到植物生理学，再到植物种群和社区人口统计学。该研究跨越了不同的尺度（空间、时间、生物组织水平）。它将产生新的见解，这些见解将广泛地推广到可能在其他全球变化情景下发生的互惠重组。这项研究基于“光合作用最低成本理论”。总的预测是，如果地下共生重组使植物在碳利用方面获得养分的成本更高，那么将观察到植物生理学的重大变化。这个项目将是第一个探索围绕人类世互惠互动重组的综合、未经测试和潜在的变革思想的项目。这个团队连接了德克萨斯理工大学，一个为西班牙裔服务的机构，和田纳西州诺克斯维尔大学，一个为来自阿巴拉契亚的学生服务的机构。来自西班牙裔或阿巴拉契亚家庭的本科生在大学成功方面有着共同的社会文化、经济和学术障碍。培训部分旨在通过综合研究丰富本科生的经验，并通过经济、指导和培训支持以及为学生及其家庭提供机会来提高第一代学生的成功。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

No organism lives in isolation. Instead, life is a web of beneficial and costly interactions among organisms and the environment. Yet little is known about how these connections will shift with global change. By the end of the 21st century, climate change will increase mean annual temperatures and shift precipitation patterns. At the same time, invasive species will cover at least 17% of Earth’s land surface, including most of North America. Plant associations with microorganisms belowground are one of the most widespread mutualisms on the planet. These mutualisms are also particularly sensitive to global change. However, the mechanisms underlying how plant-fungal mutualisms will withstand and adjust to new environments are still unclear. Thus, the key question remains: How will mutualistic partners reorganize and affect mutualism function in the future? Answering this question requires integrative, multi-disciplinary research across scales and systems. This work will create these synergies by tracking organismal, physiological, population, and community responses of native plants and their beneficial and disease-causing fungi to an invasive plant, Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard). The project will have educational impact for a next-generation STEM workforce by providing integrative research and training experiences for undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds. This IntBio project builds on a long-term experiment of exotic plant invasion to address four AIMS. I: Determine long-term patterns of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and pathogenic fungal communities associated with native plant species and how fungal communities are reorganized by invasion. II: Determine how reorganization of plant-AM fungal mutualisms affects plant physiology including carbon fixation and nitrogen uptake. III: Determine the extent to which reorganization of plant-AM fungal mutualisms and/or soil nutrient availability alter plant growth, survival and reproduction. Experimentally addressing these aims will allow IV: Integration of the results from the first three AIMs to scale from mutualism reorganization to plant physiology, to plant population and community demography. The research is integrated across different scales (spatial, temporal, levels of biological organization). It will generate novel insights that will be broadly generalizable to mutualism reorganization that is likely occurring under in other global change scenarios. This research is grounded in “photosynthetic least cost theory.” The overarching prediction is that if belowground mutualism reorganization makes nutrient acquisition more costly for the plant in terms of its carbon use, then significant shifts in plant physiology will be observed. This project will be the first to explore integrative, untested, and potentially transformative ideas surrounding the reorganization of mutualistic interactions in the Anthropocene. This team bridges Texas Tech University, a Hispanic Serving Institution, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, which serves students from Appalachia. Undergraduate students from Hispanic or Appalachian families share a common web of socio-cultural, financial, and academic barriers related to success in college. The training component aims both to enrich undergraduate students’ experiences through integrative research and to enhance such 1st generation students’ success through financial, mentoring and training support, and opportunities for students and their families.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.