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Are underground fungi responsible for Lord Howe Island’s amazing plant diversity?

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Vincent Savolainen, The Lord Howe Island Signal

Professor Vincent Savolainen has come back to Lord Howe Island to set up new research about the role that underground fungi may play in generating and maintaining plant diversity. He was accompanied this time by Imperial College London PhD student Matthew Coathup; the project is also in collaboration with Ian Hutton from the Museum. 

Our understanding of how species originate has changed considerably since Darwin’s seminal work. One aspect, however, that has been totally ignored is the role that microbes can play in driving plant and animal diversity. Here, we will test a new mechanism for the origin of plant diversity led by plant-fungal associations. We are particularly interested in underground fungi called ‘mycorrhizae’, which form tight linkages with plant roots in a mutually benefiting partnership: fungi provide plants with nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen), while plants feed the fungi with sugar and fat. Mycorrhizal fungi and their host plants represent the most prevalent symbiosis on Earth. Such symbiotic associations may be particularly powerful in facilitating adaptation and genetic divergence, leading to the origin of new plant species found today on the Island.

We will focus on the Howea palms (including their few hybrids) but also research other species in the genera Metrosideros (Mountain Roses), Coprosma, etc. The research will involve collecting a series of soil and root samples (a few grams) to determine, using genetic technologies, what fungi and other microbes are present. These analyses will be combined with controlled experiments at the Nursery over the next three years to disentangle how plant and fungi communicate with one another using specific molecules called RNA.

The proposed work has the potential to bring drastic rethinking about the mechanisms that generate plant diversity. Given the widespread nature of plant-mycorrhizal symbioses, their importance in crop production, and the prominence of soil and plant diversity in ecosystem functioning, our research will also have far-reaching impact in applied biology and agriculture, beyond evolutionary biology.

It is our hope that by providing the Board with all our results and detailed lists of all microbes present across the Island, this research will also contribute to managing this fragile ecosystem.

We are very thankful to everybody involved and the continuing warm welcome that we’ve received from the Island inhabitants.

The Lord Howe Island Signal 31 August 2022

Prof. Vincent Savolainen
Professor of Organismic Biology
Director of the Georgina Mace Centre for the Living Planet
Imperial College London
Department of Life Sciences
Silwood Park Campus
Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK

This article appeared in The Lord Howe Island Signal, 31 August 2022.

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