Tracking long-term phenology and genetic diversity changes in the Biodiversity Exploratories: a comparison of contemporary plants and historical specimen

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Anthropogenic environmental change affects the phenology as well as genetic diversity of plants, with far-reaching consequences for ecologial communities and long-term evolution. However, long-term data documenting such changes are usually rare. Some of the rare opportunities for long-term studies on phenology and genetic diversity changes are provided by herbaria, in particular now that new high-throughput genomic methods for historical samples of non-model species are available. We propose a research project that will combine the unique long-term perspectives of herbaria collections with the strength of the Biodiversity Exploratories to compare the phenology and genetic diversity of contemporary plants in the Biodiversity Exploratories with historical specimens of the same species and the very same regions. We will focus on early-flowering herbs in forest understoreys, because these species have a very distinct flowering period, and are therefore particularly amenable to studying phenology changes as well as the effects of land use on plant phenology. Our project will combine field observations with mining of natural history collections and cutting-edge methods in herbarium genomics to (1) conduct a comprehensive survey of the flowering phenology of all early-flowering understorey plants in all forest EPs, and test the effects of forest management on flowering phenology, (2) survey several major herbaria for matching specimen of the same species from the same regions, which will allow us to test for long-term trends in phenology and its climatic correlates, and to evaluate current phenology data in a historical context. Moreover, we will (3) establish and validate a new high-throughput genomic method for reduced-representation sequencing of historical herbarium samples, hyRAD-hybridization capture using RAD probes, and (4) use this method to compare the genetic diversity of current forest understorey plants in the Biodiversity Exploratories to their ancestors from the same regions. Our project will include the first comprehensive study of plant phenology, as well as the first analysis of genetic diversity in forest plants, in the Biodiversity Exploratories. Most importantly, it will be the first to add a long-term perspective and attempt to compare current to historical biodiveristy in the Biodiversity Exploratories.