Rochester Institute of Technology contributed to a massive study on a tiny roadside weed that shows urbanization is leading to adaptive evolution at a global scale.
Rochester Institute of Technology contributed to a massive study on a tiny roadside weed that shows urbanization is leading to adaptive evolution at a global scale. As part of the Global Urban Evolution Project (GLUE) project, scientists from 160 cities across six continents collected more than 110,000 samples of white clover plants in urban, suburban, and rural areas to study urbanization’s effects on the plants. It is the largest environmental evolution study ever and the results are published in the journal Science.
Scientists in each city used the same process to collect white clover samples and test them for a particular chemical anti-herbivore defense compound that also affects their stress tolerance for factors such as extreme heat and weather. Assistant Professor Kaitlin Stack Whitney from RIT’s Department of Science, Technology, and Society led a team of five environmental science students working on a senior capstone project to participate on Rochester’s behalf. In October 2018, they collected 650 samples at 41 sites along a straight path from downtown Rochester to Black Creek Park in North Chili along New York State Route 33A.
“We were picking through this tiny roadside weed, but it’s fascinating how you can unpack these global issues about urbanization and climate change by looking at this very overlooked plant,” said Stack Whitney. “There are these big global forces that are affecting how those plants are growing, what they’re doing, and whether or not they can respond to stresses in that very localized environment.”
Read more at Rochester Institute of Technology
Photo Credit: Arcaion via Pixabay
