The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Jeri L. Parrent to work with Dr. John Klironomos at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
Invasive exotic plants can have devastating economic and ecological effects on the ecosystems they invade. Despite the concern of resource managers and conservation biologists alike, a fundamental question in invasion biology remains: what ecological attributes make plants successful invaders? Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the success of exotic plants in their introduced ranges, including escape from natural enemies and the ability to easily acquire new mutualists. However, few studies have examined the importance of shifting belowground biotic interactions and their consequences for invasive exotic plant performance, or have tested these hypotheses with the necessary combination of field studies in both the native and introduced ranges of exotic plants. In this study the PI will conduct both field surveys and greenhouse experiments to study two important invasive plant species, spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) and leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula). Using a combination of molecular and experimental approaches, she I will survey mycorrhizal mutualists and fungal pathogens of C. maculosa, E. esula and co-occurring plant species from both native and introduced ranges in North America and Eastern Europe, respectively. The goals of this experiment are: 1) to compare the communities of fungal pathogens and mutualists with which C. maculosa and E. esula are associated in native vs. invasive ranges, 2) to determine the specificity of those associations by comparing C. maculosa and E. esula mutualists and enemies to those of the plant species with which they co-occur in the native and introduced ranges, and 3) to test whether phylogenetic relatedness among plant species is correlated with the overlap in pathogen and mutualist associates by sampling both related and unrelated co-occurring plant species. The results of this project will shed light on the role that shifting biotic interactions between plants and their below-ground fungal mutualists and enemies play in both fomenting and hindering plant establishment in novel environments. As human activities continue to transport plant material around the world, understanding the causes of exotic plant invasions can help reduce the risks of new escapes.
