Can functional genomic diversity provide novel insights into mechanisms of community assembly? A pilot-study from an invaded alpine streambed

An important focus of community ecology, including invasion biology, is to investigate functional trait diversity patterns to disentangle the effects of environmental and biotic interactions. However, a notable limitation is that studies usually rely on a small and easy to measure set of functional traits, which might not immediately reflect ongoing ecological responses to changing abiotic or biotic conditions, including those that occur at a molecular or physiological level. We explored the potential of using the diversity of expressed genes—functional genomic diversity (FGD)—to understand ecological dynamics of a recent and ongoing alpine invasion. We quantified FGD based on transcriptome data measured for 26 plant species occurring along adjacent invaded and pristine streambeds. We used an RNA-seq approach to summarize the overall number of expressed transcripts and their annotations to functional categories, and contrasted this with functional trait diversity (FTD) measured from a s...

群落生态学（包括入侵生物学）的一个重要研究方向是探究功能性状多样性模式，以解析环境与生物相互作用的效应。然而，一个显著局限在于，现有研究通常依赖少量易测的功能性状集，这些性状可能无法即时反映生物对非生物或生物条件变化的正在发生的生态响应，包括分子或生理层面的响应。我们探究了利用表达基因多样性——功能基因组多样性（FGD）——来理解近期及持续发生的高山入侵生态动态的潜力。我们基于26种植物的转录组数据量化了FGD，这些植物分布于相邻的受入侵及原始河床区域。我们采用RNA-seq技术总结了表达转录本的总数及其功能类别注释，并将其与通过s...测得的功能性状多样性（FTD）进行对比。