A researcher at Utah State University and her team discovered that old seeds from a coastal marsh plant can be brought back to life. The resurrected plants can offer clues about how quickly coastal wetlands are adapting to environmental changes.
Megan Vahsen is a postdoctoral researcher in the Quinney College of Natural Resources at USU. Some of her research involves a novel investigation of the impacts of rapid plant trait evolution on coastal wetland resilience. And for that, she used decades-old seeds.
“So it was actually found out by chance," Vahsen said, "that seeds of these plants can be resurrected, or be germinated from soil seed banks.”
Vahsen and her team then compared the plants with their modern forms.
“And we tried to characterize how much variation in their traits is due to their genetics, and also how much their traits have changed across time," she said. "And that gives us an idea of the impact of evolution on traits.”
That's because in terms of ecosystem functioning, traits matter.
“It reveals how much these plants contribute to carbon storage," she said. "And then also to how fast the marsh can keep pace with sea level rise.”
“At a very basic level, coastal marshes serve as a natural barrier between the land and the water," Vahsen continued. "In a real world context, coastal wetlands are very important ecosystems, particularly in the context of global environmental change. They store a lot of carbon."
Granted, this carbon storage is often attributed to marsh plants, like the sedge that Vahsen studied, that trap carbon within their bodies. However, Vahsen and her team discovered these plants owe a lot of that storage not to their green shoots, but to their hidden roots.
“So how plants root and how much they allocate to the roots is really important," she said. "And they also had the biggest impact on ecosystem function, because a lot of that carbon storage is happening because of root traits.”
Root traits have changed rapidly in just a few decades.
“So, what we know is that these plants have evolved," Vahsen said. "But we don't really know in response to what."
That leaves scientists with a lot more to explore.
