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Contains fulltext : 250471.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)

18 mei 2022, Contains fulltext : 250526.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

The ability of a species to cope with both long-term and short-term environmental fluctuations might vary with the species' life history. While some life-history characteristics promote large and stable population sizes despite interannual environmental fluctuations, other life-history strategies might allow to evolve quickly in response to long-term gradual changes. In a theoretical study, we show that there is a tradeoff between both properties. Life-history characteristics that promote fast rates of evolution come at the expense of a poor response to short-term environmental fluctuations, and vice versa. We demonstrated the presence of this tradeoff by the use of a mathematical analysis and individual-based simulations., The ability of a species to cope with both long-term and short-term environmental fluctuations might vary with the species' life history. While some life-history characteristics promote large and stable population sizes despite interannual environmental fluctuations, other life-history strategies might allow to evolve quickly in response to long-term gradual changes. In a theoretical study, we show that there is a tradeoff between both properties. Life-history characteristics that promote fast rates of evolution come at the expense of a poor response to short-term environmental fluctuations, and vice versa. We demonstrated the presence of this tradeoff by the use of a mathematical analysis and individual-based simulations.

Test data for use with the epiGBS2 pipeline. Includes R1 and R2 reads and a barcode file. Can be used to see if the installation has worked correctly and output will be created as expected.

We present epiGBS2, a laboratory protocol based on epiGBS (Gurp et al., 2016) with a revised and user-friendly bioinformatics pipeline for a wide range of species with or without reference genome. Performance of several critical steps in epiGBS2 was evaluated against baseline data sets from Arabidopsis thaliana and Great tit (Parus major), which confirmed overall good performance of epiGBS2. We provide here the raw bisulfite sequencing data of the epiGBS2 run for Arabidopsis thaliana.

We evaluated the genetic diversity of teak (Tectona grandis L.) provenances at a newly established provenance trial with 52 provenances collected from Africa, South America and Asia in Tain II Forest Reserve in Central Ghana. This provenance trial was established to widen the genetic basis for teak establishment in West Africa. Using Genotyping by Sequencing (GBS) we analysed the genetic diversity of these provenances. Results of the study revealed that, although acquired from a wide geographical range, most teak provenances in the trial belong to only two distinct groups that are closely related. The implication of this finding is that, for breeding, a wider range of provenances is needed from the original teak distribution areas, and more specifically from Southern India. We conclude that urgent protection of older existing sources of genetic variation in teak, as well as an improvement of international collaboration under the Nagoya protocol with countries with native teak populations, is necessary.

Plant interactions are as important belowground as aboveground. Belowground plant interactions are however inherently difficult to quantify, as roots of different species are difficult to disentangle. Although for a couple of decades molecular techniques have been successfully applied to quantify root abundance, root identification and quantification in multispecies plant communities remains particularly challenging. Here we present a novel methodology, multispecies genotyping by sequencing (msGBS), as a next step to tackle this challenge. First, a multispecies meta-reference database containing thousands of gDNA clusters per species is created from GBS derived High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) reads. Second, GBS derived HTS reads from multispecies root samples are mapped to this meta-reference which, after a filter procedure to increase the taxonomic resolution, allows the parallel quantification of multiple species. The msGBS signal of 111 mock-mixture root samples, with up to 8 plant species per sample, was used to calculate the within-species abundance. Optional subsequent calibration yielded the across-species abundance. The within- and across-species abundances highly correlated (R2 range 0.72–0.94 and 0.85–0.98, respectively) to the biomass-based species abundance. Compared to a qPCR based method which was previously used to analyse the same set of samples, msGBS provided similar results. Additional data on 11 congener species groups within 105 natural field root samples showed high taxonomic resolution of the method. msGBS is highly scalable in terms of sensitivity and species numbers within samples, which is a major advantage compared to the qPCR method and advances our tools to reveal hidden belowground interactions.

Teak genetic diversity in Ghana shows a narrow base for further breeding and a need for improved international collaboration for provenance exchange., Teak genetic diversity in Ghana shows a narrow base for further breeding and a need for improved international collaboration for provenance exchange.

Contains fulltext : 219163.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

epiGBS is an existing reduced representation bisulfite sequencing method to determine cytosine methylation and genetic polymorphisms de novo. Here, we present epiGBS2, an improved epiGBS laboratory protocol and user-friendly bioinformatics pipeline for a wide range of species with or without reference genome. epiGBS2 decreases costs and time investment and increases user-friendliness and reproducibility. The library protocol was adjusted to allow for a flexible choice of restriction enzymes and a double digest. Instead of fully methylated adapters, semi-methylated adapters are now used. The bioinformatics pipeline was improved in speed and integrated in the snakemake workflow management system, which now makes the pipeline easy to execute, modular, and parameter settings flexible. We also provide a detailed description of the laboratory protocol, an extensive manual of the bioinformatics pipeline, which is publicly accessible on github (https://github.com/nioo-knaw/epiGBS2) and zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3819996), and example output.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.

Organisms must cope with both short- and long-term environmental changes to persist. In this study we investigated whether life histories trade-off between their robustness to short-term environmental perturbations and their ability to evolve directional trait changes. We could confirm the tradeoff by modeling the eco-evolutionary dynamics of life-histories along the fast-slow pace-of-life continuum. Offspring dormancy and high adult survival rates allowed for large population sizes to be maintained in face of interannual environmental fluctuations but limited the speed of trait evolution with ongoing environmental change. In contrast, precocious offspring maturation and short-living adults promoted evolvability while lowering demographic robustness. This tradeoff had immediate consequences on extinction dynamics in variable environments. High evolvability allowed short-lived species to cope with long-lasting gradual environmental change, but came at the expense of more pronounced population declines and extinction rates from environmental variability. Higher robustness of slow life-histories helped them persist better on short timescales.