At the roots of the forest

[LUM Magazine] - Published on January 18, 2022 in Science-Society

A better understanding of the evolutionary history of annonaceae and tropical rainforests is the aim of the Global research project led by botanist Thomas Couvreur. This research will shed light on the evolution of this extraordinary ecosystem.

Of all the planet's ecosystems, it is the one with the richest biodiversity. " So rich, in fact, that tropical rainforests are still poorly understood," confides Thomas Couvreur. The botanist from the Diade* laboratory has been surveying these forests for years. They cover almost 600 million hectares in Africa, and more than 1,700 million worldwide. An extraordinary expedition terrain for the researcher who, with his GLOBAL research project, aims to gain a better understanding of this indispensable ecosystem.

How has their great biodiversity evolved over time? To answer this key question, Thomas Couvreur and his colleagues are focusing on one of the most important tropical plant families: the Annonaceae. " This family comprises almost 2,500 species distributed throughout the world's tropical forests, where they first appeared 90 million years ago," explains Thomas Couvreur.

Its aim: "to bring together everything we know in order to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary history of annonaceae, and therefore of tropical rainforests". The GLOBAL project relies on numerous collaborations with developing countries to gather as much data as possible. " To do this, we will of course be studying plants in the field, but we will mainly be using specimens from herbariums. A mine of information for botanists, who are deploying a whole arsenal of tools, from spectrometry to molecular sequencing, to better trace the genealogy of Annonaceae....

But also to better describe their future trajectories. After all, many species are threatened with extinction as a result of human activity. What impact will the disappearance of these species have on the evolutionary history of tropical rainforests? " We're trying to understand how the taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of the Annonaceae tree of life will be affected," explains Thomas Couvreur.

A project that will lift the veil on the evolution of these special forests, which play a major role in climate regulation, not least thanks to their capacity to store carbon.