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| "As buds give rise
to fresh growth, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all
sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with
the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the
crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and
beautiful ramifications."
—Charles
Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
Reconstructing the evolutionary history of early land plants (see "Lush Life") is just one part of a massive project on biodiversity. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded some $17 million to seven research teams as the beginning of an effort to put together a complete "Tree of Life"—a map of the evolutionary history of all Earth's species, past and present. Besides plants, the teams are studying such organisms as bacteria, fungi, parasitic roundworms, and birds. Each team is expected to develop methods for processing the resulting genetic and morphological information that other scientists can use to map out other branches of the evolutionary tree. This "megascience" project grew out of concern over gaps in knowledge about the world's living species, particularly with regard to the growing numbers of extinctions. Only 60,000 to 70,000 species have been studied in any detail, and scientists estimate that the 1.75 million species they know something about represent only 10 percent of those now living. Their belief that many of these species will disappear in the decades ahead makes completing the project urgent. "We want to catalog biodiversity before it's gone," says Karen Renzaglia, a plant biologist at SIUC who’s working on the project. The tree will be "a picture of historical relationships that explains all similarities and differences among plants, animals, and microorganisms," the NSF says. Among other benefits, a fuller understanding of the relationships between organisms could lead to new drugs and agricultural products, improved ability to track and combat emerging diseases, and better information for conservation scientists, including ways to deal with ecosystem-damaging invasive species. —K. C. Jaehnig
For more information, contact Dr. Karen Renzaglia,Dept. of Plant Biology, at (618) 453-3229 or renzaglia@plant.siu.edu, or see the Land Plants Online web site. |
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