CONSERVE

Rivercane Science and Tribal Engagement Support

The term "watershed" encompasses both an area drained by water and a turning point in action, highlighting the importance of water in Earth's ecosystems. With the decline of our nation's watersheds, there is a need for practical and resilient approaches to manage and preserve natural ecosystems. The University of Alabama (UA), in collaboration with water agencies like NOAA, USGS, USACE, and USFWS, recognizes the need for a research group dedicated to conserving, protecting, and enhancing the water landscape vital for the well-being, culture, and future economy of plants, animals, and people.

The CONSERVE group combines various research disciplines such as biology, genetics, anthropology, ecology, and machine learning to sustain biodiversity and resilience in Alabama watersheds and beyond. They utilize traditional ecological management alongside modern approaches to tackle watershed management challenges and support community and industry needs. With Alabama's diverse watersheds serving as a living laboratory, CONSERVE develops cost-effective strategies to prevent biodiversity loss and enhance cultural and watershed resilience for the benefit of communities nationwide.

See how we are having an impact. Click here to view the report.

The Giant Rivercane Genome Sequencing Project

Giant rivercane (Arundinaria gigantea) is a bamboo native to the eastern United States and historically served as the vegetative basis of canebrake habitats prominent in river systems prior to European colonization. These fast-growing plants flower sporadically and instead reproduce primarily through clonal propagation.

Genetic diversity of this species is unsurprisingly low within populations and diverse between geographically separated stands. Due to their role in protecting native river systems, promoting biodiversity, reducing sediment and nitrogen runoff from agriculture fields, and rapid accumulation of biomass, giant rivercane serves as an ideal system for the development of ecosystem service-minded bioenergy crops.

Promoting such a program will require an understanding of the existing genetic, morphological, and physiological diversity of this species. We will build this program starting with two foundational goals:

- Assembling a genome
- Characterizing the phenotypic and genetic diversity of multiple giant rivercane populations

The sequencing and assembling of a phased, chromosome-scaffolded genome for giant rivercane will serve in the long-term development of genetic resources promoting the conservation and propagation of this cultural keystone species while furthering our understanding of the genetics behind its various qualities that make it a valuable partner species in nature-based engineering.

The genome sequence will enable the identification of novel genetic and regulatory regions associated with:

- Rapid vegetative growth
- Nitrogen and heavy metal uptake
- Flooding response
- Shade tolerance

We will also be able to use this genome for future work to identify the genetic origins of giant rivercane characteristics that were selected through human-mediated propagation. The genome will be essential for population genomics work to identify variation across the diversity of the species, leading to the discovery of genetic links to characteristics furthering conservation and river ecosystem restoration.

Giant rivercane is a polyploid species and will provide opportunity for furthering our understanding of how polyploid genomes function and adapt to various environmental stresses. Polyploidy is a common mutation in plants where a species—or even a single population—will have more than two copies of its genome.

This leads to unique interactions between the genome copies and can promote novel adaptive phenotypes. Many crop species are polyploid as are many cancer and tumor cells leading to basic genome science that is translatable to food security and human health