Gene Expression and Tree Growth in the CTFS-ForestGEO Plot at Harvard Forest 2017-2019

Major goals in ecosystem ecology have been to scale from leaves to canopies and to determine whether individual-level, intra-species and inter-specific variation is critical for models projecting ecosystem processes now and in the future. The project is important in that it examines these issues in detail considering genotypes and levels of gene expression all the way up to canopy level CO2 flux. Ecological genomics and transcriptomics are nascent fields that have been primarily restricted to model species in natural and (mostly) controlled environments. To date, we have very few studies of non-model organisms in nature and/or studies of functional genomics through space and time. The research is producing extraordinarily rich datasets regarding the gene expression of trees across populations, through space in each population, across the growing season and across years and linking this information to growth and gas exchange. It will, therefore, provide tremendous insights into how much variation exists in nature thereby guiding sampling designs in future ecological 'omics projects. More importantly, it will provide unusually detailed phenotypic information for important non-model species that have large impacts on the CO2 flux of eastern US forests.