MCA: Genomic Tools for Detecting Short-Term Evolutionary Change in Long-Term Ecological Research on Alpine Plants

Long-term studies provide critical information about how populations, communities, and ecosystems change across environments and over time. However, ecologists often lack the tools needed to understand how genetic variation within populations contributes to the ecological dynamics observed in nature. Recent advances in genomics and sequencing methods now make it possible to study species that are well represented in ecological data sets but have characteristics that previously made complementary genetic analyses intractable. This project will develop new genomic resources for alpine bistort (Bistorta vivipara), a widespread, well-studied Arctic–alpine plant species with many of the characteristics that have limited genetic study in Arctic and alpine floras, including a large and complex genome, long lifespan, and predominantly clonal reproduction. These resources will be used to reconstruct the species’ history of range expansion and contraction across the Northern Hemisphere and characterize the distribution of genetic variation within and among populations at a long-term ecological research site where it has been monitored for more than 45 years. By integrating biotechnology and AI-enabled genomic approaches with long-term ecological research, this project will advance understanding of how evolutionary processes contribute to ecological change in a representative species of Arctic and alpine ecosystems. The project will also foster a new collaboration among scientists with complementary expertise and support the development of educational materials that introduce contemporary genomic approaches into undergraduate life-science curricula. This project advances NSF's priorities in Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology. Genomic methods are fundamental tools in evolutionary biology that are increasingly used to address both new and longstanding questions in non-model systems. As a result, they have the potential to unravel the evolutionary processes that influence the long-term ecological dynamics of organisms that play large roles in ecosystem function. This project will develop new genomic resources to evaluate the contributions of genetic, environmental, and developmental processes in driving long-term population dynamics and evolutionary change in Bistorta vivipara, a slow-growing, long-lived, clonal forb that is widespread in Arctic and alpine ecosystems of the Northern hemisphere. The genomic tools will be used to (1) resolve the phylogeographic and evolutionary history of Bistorta vivipara, (2) characterize the distribution of genetic variation in this species across heterogeneous alpine terrain at the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in the Southern Rocky Mountains, and (3) support the establishment of a new, genetically-informed long-term experiment on Niwot Ridge that will address previously intractable questions about the evolutionary dynamics of long-lived alpine plant populations. Together, the activities and results of this project will address outstanding questions about the roles of ecological and genetic processes in driving alpine plant population dynamics and advance the integration of evolutionary biology into long-term ecological research studies. 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.