BRC-BIO: Environmental variation and the disruption of biotic local adaptation: Predicting consequences of changing microbial interactions for plant populations

该项目将衡量气候变化可能如何扰乱形成当地适应的物种互动。当种群进化以在其家乡环境中变得更成功时，就会发生局部适应。物种之间的有害和有益的相互作用可能会创造出局部适应的“生物”模式。然而，生物适应的强度在大范围景观中的差异仍然知之甚少。解决这一知识鸿沟是当务之急，因为气候变化预计将扰乱物种之间的相互作用。这种转变可能会挑战物种在不断变化的群落中坚持的能力。这项工作将产生关于大型鼠尾草的关键数据，这是一种受到恢复关注的衰落植物，以及它与土壤微生物的关系可能如何随着气候变化而变化。这项研究的结果将适用于选择合适的种子进行恢复工作。此外，该项目将为跨学科的本科生创造实践研究和指导经验。这项工作还旨在提高学生在一门大型生物学课程中的记忆力，使用受这种濒危原生植物启发的主动学习。局部适应是理解种群当前和未来持久性的基础；然而，检验局部适应的实验很少分离非生物和生物机制。这一研究缺口迫在眉睫，因为气候变化可能同时扰乱非生物和生物健康驱动因素，潜在地超过长寿物种的适应能力。这项拟议的工作将整合基于现场和实验室的相互移植实验、土壤细菌和真菌群落的测序以及物种丰富的群落的建模方法，以分离大型鼠尾草(Artemisia Tridentata)中植物-微生物相互作用的适应重要性。这些结果将被纳入种群模型，以评估来自不同非生物环境的种群在变化的气候条件下对生物适应中断的敏感度是否不同。该项目团队将收集更多的现场数据，以衡量种群模型在量化植物-微生物相互作用与大型鼠尾草正在进行的恢复工作的相关性方面的预测准确性。这项工作将促进我们理解生物相互作用的适应性重要性如何在不同的景观中变化，以及哪些非生物驱动因素可能塑造这些梯度。该项目由生物学新学院建设研究能力计划和既定的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)联合资助。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。

This project will measure how climate change may disrupt the species interactions that shape local adaptation. Local adaptation occurs when populations evolve to become more successful in their home environments. Harmful and beneficial interactions among species may create "biotic" patterns of local adaptation. Yet, variation in the strength of biotic adaptation across large landscapes remains poorly understood. Addressing this knowledge gap is urgent because climate change is expected to disrupt species interactions. Such shifts may challenge species' abilities to persist in changing communities. This work will generate crucial data about big sagebrush, a declining plant of restoration concern, and how its relationships with soil microbes may shift with climate change. The results of this research will be applicable to the selection of suitable seeds for restoration efforts. In addition, this project will create hands-on research and mentorship experiences for undergraduate students across disciplines. This work also aims to improve student retention in a large biology course, using active learning inspired by this imperiled native plant.Local adaptation is foundational to understanding populations’ current and future persistence; however, experiments examining local adaptation rarely isolate abiotic and biotic mechanisms. This research gap is urgent, as climate change may disrupt both abiotic and biotic fitness drivers simultaneously, potentially outpacing the adaptive capacities of long-lived species. The proposed work will integrate field- and lab-based reciprocal transplant experiments, sequencing of soil bacterial and fungal communities, and modeling approaches for species-rich communities to isolate the adaptive importance of plant-microbe interactions in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) across environmental gradients. These results will be incorporated into population models to assess whether populations from contrasting abiotic environments differ in their susceptibility to disruption of biotic adaptation under changing climatic conditions. The project team will collect additional field data to measure the population models’ predictive accuracy in quantifying the relevance of plant-microbe interactions to ongoing restoration efforts in big sagebrush. This work will advance our understanding of how the adaptive importance of biotic interactions varies across heterogenous landscapes and which abiotic drivers may shape these gradients.This project is jointly funded by the Building Research Capacity of New Faculty in Biology program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.