Drought stress drives epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation and histone modification, in plants that help them, and sometimes their offspring, survive future droughts better (Ashapkin et al. 2020). This stress memory can pass along both adaptive and maladaptive traits as transgenerational effects (Ashapkin et al. 2020). It is known that these epigenetic changes are triggered by stress and can carry into the next generation but the second and third-generation interactions between drought and species richness on plant health and productivity are not yet understood, furthermore, the transgenerational effects of biodiversity alone are poorly studied (Mahecha et al. 2024).

Plants do not grow in isolation, but depend heavily upon other organisms to deliver water and dissolved nutrients to their roots.  Almost all plant species form mutualistic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi.  The fungi obtain photosynthates (i.e. sugars) from the tree in exchange for delivery of water and minerals. Mycorrhizal partners can supply up to 80% of the nitrogen and phosphorus to plants and play a key role in seed germination, plant growth, and survival. The mutualistic relationship between fungi and tree roots has become so fundamental to prevailing thought in forest biology that the concept of the individual tree or tree community is often replaced with the concept of a meta-organism or “holobiont” that explicitly includes the plants and their community of symbionts. Despite the potential importance of mycorrhizae, we have not considered its role in restoration projects and assisted migration in coastal forests in northeastern Minnesota.  

IBS MS Student

Adaptation after drought and biodiversity treatments at a long-term ecological research site

The central goal of my research is to identify the synergistic, additive, and antagonistic effects of drought, maternal effects, and species composition on native prairie plant populations and to better inform how native prairie communities influence the ecological response to climate change in Minnesota. To these ends, I am leveraging phenotypic and genomic data from plants grown at the University of Minnesota’s Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, a long-term ecological study. I am combining common garden and reciprocal transplant approaches with next generation sequencing technology to discern the responses of plant traits and genes to the water-availability and diversity treatments