Onderzoeksportaal

Engels

Evolution of endemism and biogeographical patterns of the Afromontane archipelago

Project: Onderzoek

  • Amalfi, Mario (PI)
  • Decock, Cony (PI)
  • Castillo, Gabriel (PI)
  • Njouonkou, André-Ledoux (PI)
  • Yombiyeni, Prudence (PI)
  • Balezi, Alphonse (PI)
  • Rizinde Hakizimana, Jean-Claude (PI)

Beschrijving

The main objective is to search for the evolutionary history and origins of the presumed complex fungal communities inhabiting the Afromontane archipelago. Tropical mountains are known to represent unbeaten hotspot of biodiversity and endemism. They offer vertical environmental gradients for life, providing a wide spectrum of environmental conditions over short distances, otherwise only seen over several thousands of kilometres of latitudinal distance. Few ecosystems provide better opportunities for the study of evolution and speciation mechanisms than those inhabiting the high African mountains. However, the Afromontane Mycota are scarcely known. This leads to an important bias in the assessment of the African biodiversity, and, coupled with rapidly increasing rates of deforestation due to anthropogenic pressure and vulnerability due to global warming plead for urgent efforts to implement as much as possible fungal surveys. The project will test different hypotheses on mixed origins and migration routes explaining the current communities and their distribution. Several distant fungal groups, encompassing a diversity of ecological functions (biomass turnover / plant pathogens-regulation / plant growth) and representing different biological strategies in term of reproduction (annual, perennial), and nutrition (wood-decay, tree parasite, symbiotic ectomycorrhizas), will be selected as models to test these hypotheses.
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