Development of a comprehensive database towards understanding plant evolution and response to climate change
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- Principal Investigator
Associate Professor / Joel Hamilton NITTA
- Affiliation
Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University
Researchmap
ORCID ID
- Principal Investigator
Predicting and mitigating the impacts of global warming on plants, which form the foundation of various ecosystems around the world, is a critical issue not only for the future of biology but for humanity as a whole. This study focuses on ferns to address this issue. Ferns are widely distributed and play an important role in forming the forest understory, making them an excellent model system for understanding environmental change. Furthermore, ferns have many fewer species compared to flowering plants, making them a more manageable subject of study. However, at present, a complete phylogenetic tree that includes all fern species, which is necessary for accurately predicting the impacts of global warming, has not yet been completed.
Additionally, the data required for such analysis is scattered across multiple databases, which frequently use different scientific names, making data integration difficult. The main objectives of this study are
1) to construct a complete phylogenetic tree including all extant fern species and
2) to develop a database and web portal integrating genetic, taxonomic, and geospatial data on ferns.
This database will be useful not only for evolutionary studies of ferns but also for biodiversity analyses of all terrestrial plants.
This research will contribute to understanding the history of life on Earth and provide essential insights for predicting and mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.
