Genetics Linked With Ecosystem Evolution

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona, August 10, 2006 (ENS) - A team of scientists from the United States, Canada and Australia has found that the genes of one organism not only control the characteristics of that individual but also dictate the behavior of thousands of other organisms in a community.

They say these genes influence the evolution of an entire ecosystem.

"We’re pushing a whole new field of research," said lead investigator Tom Whitham, Regents Professor of biological sciences at Northern Arizona University, NAU.

"What we’ve done is zero in on a foundation species, because not all species are as equally important ecologically," Whitham said. The foundation, or key, species in this case is the cottonwood tree, which is the first tree to have all its genes sequenced, or mapped.

Cottonwood trees are common across the southwest. These cottonwoods line the San Pedro River at Hereford, Arizona. (Photo courtesy EPA)

These genetically controlled tannin levels drive the structure, or phenotype, of a riparian forest, Whitham says. Tannins affect the decomposition rate of cottonwood leaves, which in turn affects the fertility of soils, which affects the microbes in the soil, which affect the insects that live in the soil or eat the leaves, which affect the birds that feed on the insects, and so on.

In the July issue of "Nature Reviews Genetics" and the May issue of "Evolution," Whitham and fellow researchers discuss how this phenotype is heritable on an ecosystem level. That is, the progeny of a tree are likely to support the same communities of organisms and ecosystem processes that their parents supported.

The implications are far reaching, affecting efforts to conserve biodiversity in the face of habitat destruction and climate change. Planting trees that are genetically diverse will result in increased diversity of other species in the dependent community. The greater the tree diversity, the greater the chance of associated species surviving environmental degradation.

"It’s not enough to save rare and endangered species. We need to save genetic diversity in the foundation species," said study co-author Jennifer Schweitzer, a postdoctoral researcher at NAU. "Having high genetic diversity in these foundation species is insurance against changes in the future."

The research also sheds light on genetically modified organisms and their effects on the landscapes in which they are introduced. Grasses that are genetically altered to prevent weed growth could pass that resistance along to exotic plants, which then might take over a community and change the evolution of that ecosystem.

A male Bullocks oriole feeds on a cottonwood tree in the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo by Henry Detwiler courtesy Southwest Birders)

The project includes scientists from a multitude of disciplines because, as Whitham says, "No one person has all the skills to do this."

"This is an exciting project with global impact, drawing on the expertise of geneticists, ecologists, molecular biologists, biogeographers and others," said Chris Greer, program director at the National Science Foundation. "The results are expected to not only shed light on how complex biological communities function but to inform efforts to address the impact of human activities, such as landscape fragmentation, on stressed ecosystems across the planet."

The researchers are the first to study the genetic framework of communities and ecosystems in the wild. They have planted several experimental "common gardens" of cottonwoods in Arizona and Utah. The trees are propagated at NAU’s research greenhouse. Through DNA fingerprinting, the scientists know the precise genetic makeup of each tree.

In one experiment, Whitham’s group worked with the Bureau of Reclamation to plant about 10,000 trees at the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge along the lower Colorado River, about 20 miles south of Blythe, California, to examine how genetic diversity at the stand level influences communities and ecosystem processes.

With a cottonwood clone in hand, Tom Whitham, bottom row with beard, stands in the greenhouse with some of the project's collaborators. (Photo courtesy NAU)

All of the experiments, so far, have exceeded the researchers’ expectations.

"Initially we thought that the [genetic influences] would be more localized - that the influences would be less genetic and more environmental as we moved beyond the local common garden setting to all of the western U.S," Whitham said.

In the end, however, he said, "Plant genes are far more important than we ever expected them to be."

"This study has enormous conservation implications," said Kitty Gehring, a NAU member of the research team. "When we talk about conservation, we typically look at the species level. We need to look below the level of the species to the genetic level," said Gehring, who studies the mutually dependent relationship of fungi and the plant roots on which they live.

Now the researchers want to know if their findings hold true in different environments around the world. Whitham has just returned from South Africa and Borneo in Southeast Asia, where he is planting the seeds for further study.

A parallel study in Australia that examines the eucalyptus tree as the foundation species is yielding the same results as the studies on cottonwoods.