Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MyGardenOfTrees (A range-wide transplant experiment using participatory science and genomic prediction to assess local adaptation in forest trees)
Período documentado: 2022-12-01 hasta 2024-05-31
How organisms adapt to their environments is the most fundamental question in evolutionary biology and is of utmost importance given current climate change threats. Identifying key traits involved in adaptations and understanding how they interact with each other, and with the environment, is a particularly urgent task for foundation and resource-production species, such as forest trees. Existing experiments, so-called provenance trials, assessing the local suitability of tree species and provenances lack scalability and predictability across the species range, and especially at the species range margins. MyGardenOfTrees attempts to overcome these shortcomings using a novel participatory science approach. An unprecedented "distributed" provenance trial is launched across Europe, where hundreds of voluntary foresters are establishing a small trial and evaluating the regeneration and early growth capacity of two forest tree species. Observations obtained from these trials will be combined with genomic data, and using tools borrowed from plant breeding, used to develop a prediction tool for foresters to help them build forests better adapted to climate change.
MyGardenOfTrees is a participatory science project that conducts an unprecedented species range-wide transplant experiment. This experiment is now established with over 300 voluntary forester participants across Europe and will generate unprecedented amounts of trait observation for two European forest tree species complexes, Fagus and Abies species. Each forester established a so-called “micro-garden”, a small provenance trial, directly in a forest that s/he owns and/or manages. Each micro-garden contains seeds from a carefully selected set of 25 seed families (out of 377 used in the study), each replicated four times within the garden. The global study design explores the climate space in a way that each seed family is tested across most available climatic conditions. Although the study is limited by the space offered by voluntary participants, the climate space of the range of the studied species is well explored. Seeds are protected with purpose-designed seed protectors to avoid seed predation, thus protecting the trials, but also avoiding contaminating the forest where the trials are established with foreign seeds. Quality seeds were obtained for the experiment during a massive seed collection campaign organized in 2022 autumn. The collection resulted in seeds from 18 provenances for Abies and 14 for Fagus, with ten families for each, on average. The collected seeds were tested in climate chamber trials that confirmed the high quality of our seeds. Beyond the scientific value, this project gives foresters the opportunity to take part in an experiment, thus it can be considered as a next-generation participatory science study. Foresters are part of the process of observing the germination, survival, and growth of various provenances and contributing the unprecedented research effort of finding suitable provenances for reforestation at sites that are vulnerable to climate change.
In parallel with the experiments, whole genome sequencing data is being generated for all mother trees. Genomic data combined with fossil data, is used to refine the demographic history of the two species complexes.
In parallel with the experiments, whole genome sequencing data is being generated for all mother trees. Genomic data combined with fossil data, is used to refine the demographic history of the two species complexes.
Observations from traditional provenance trials used in forestry were difficult to generalize because they have been limited to a small number of provenances of the species that were tested at one or few particular locations. Thus, they lacked scalability and predictability across the species current and future range, especially at the species range margins. In this experiment, the performance of various provenances and families is evaluated across a wide range of environments, thus findings can be generalized. In the coming 30 months, observations from the hundreds of micro-gardens across Europe will be combined together and with genomic data to draw general conclusions about the climate adaptedness of provenances and families. The ultimate goal of this project is to estimate the reaction norms of different populations and lineages in terms of early life-history traits across a large range of environments, including extremes, where fitness drops to zero. Reaction norms summarize the phenotypic expression of a genetic unit, and have been rarely estimated in across more than two natural environments, let alone the species range. This experiment will us to obtain an unprecedented number of observations across a wide–range of genetic units (lineages, populations, families) and environments. Further, using the genomic data, we will be able to estimate the genetic similarity between populations and families, and using the interpolated environmental data, the environmental similarity between garden locations. This information will be incorporated to a genomic prediction model, and used for predicting the breeding values of mother trees (genetic merit evaluated by their offspring) and the average performance of populations in untested environments. Thereby, we will be able to estimate most missing gene–environment combinations. The prediction tool will be presented as a web-tool; the first version is expected in 2026.