Dimensions: Collaborative Research: Can Evolutionary History Predict How Changes in Biodiversity Impact the Productivity of Ecosystems?

科学家们试图了解目前生物多样性的加速丧失将如何影响地球生态系统的生产力和可持续性。这个项目的目标是预测哪些物种的灭绝将对初级生产力产生最大的影响，初级生产力是光合作用捕获生物质的根本重要过程。该项目测试了进化导致物种间遗传差异和生态位差异这一新的假设。反过来，生态位的差异导致了“分工”，这决定了生物群落如何有效地获取生产新生物质所需的有限资源。为了验证这一假设，该项目将生态学、系统发生学和基因组学领域联系起来，研究最广泛和最重要的藻类之一如何影响整个北美湖泊的生产力。目标是1)建立一个新的分子系统学，可以用来测试淡水藻类的组合是否比偶然情况下预期的更具遗传多样性。2)通过实验操纵物种的进化和遗传差异，以评估这些方面的生物多样性如何控制生态位差异和初级生产力。3)对基因表达数据进行分析，以确定物种间生态位差异的遗传基础，并将这些与浮游植物群落的初级生产率联系起来。该项目将培训从高中实习生到博士后研究人员的各种学生，从事融合基因组学、系统发生学和生态学的多学科工作。两个K-12练习将扩大学生对重要淡水栖息地生物多样性的欣赏。该项目提供的信息将为淡水资源管理提供重要信息。

Scientists seek to understand how the current accelerating loss of biodiversity will affect the productivity and sustainability of Earth's ecosystems. The goal of this project is to predict which species extinctions will have the greatest effect on primary production, the fundamentally important process of photosynthetic capture of biomass. This project tests the novel hypothesis that evolution leads to genetic divergence and niche differences among species. In turn, niche differences lead to a 'division of labor' that determines how efficiently biological communities capture the limited resources needed to produce new biomass. To test this hypothesis, the project bridges the fields of ecology, phylogenetics, and genomics to examine how one of the most widespread and ecologically important groups of algae impacts the productivity of lakes throughout North America. The goals are to 1) Create a new molecular phylogeny that can be used to test whether assemblages of freshwater algae are more genetically diverse than expected by chance. 2) Experimentally manipulate the evolutionary and genetic divergence of species to assess how these aspects of biodiversity control niche differences and primary production. 3) Conduct analyses of gene expression data to identify the genetic basis of niche differences among species, and relate these to rates of primary production by phytoplankton communities.The project will train a variety of students from high school interns to postdoctoral researchers in multidisciplinary work blending genomics, phylogenetics, and ecology. Two K-12 exercises will broaden students' appreciation for biological diversity in important freshwater habitats. The information from the project will provide important information for the management of freshwater resources.