Spatial and evolutionary predictability of phytochemical diversity
- 11 January 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 118 (3)
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2013344118
Abstract
To cope with environmental challenges, plants produce a wide diversity of phytochemicals, which are also the source of numerous medicines. Despite decades of research in chemical ecology, we still lack an understanding of the organization of plant chemical diversity across species and ecosystems. To address this challenge, we hypothesized that molecular diversity is not only related to species diversity, but also constrained by trophic, climatic, and topographical factors. We screened the metabolome of 416 vascular plant species encompassing the entire alpine elevation range and four alpine bioclimatic regions in order to characterize their phytochemical diversity. We show that by coupling phylogenetic information, topographic, edaphic, and climatic variables, we predict phytochemical diversity, and its inherent composition, of plant communities throughout landscape. Spatial mapping of phytochemical diversity further revealed that plant assemblages found in low to midelevation habitats, with more alkaline soils, possessed greater phytochemical diversity, whereas alpine habitats possessed higher phytochemical endemism. Altogether, we present a general tool that can be used for predicting hotspots of phytochemical diversity in the landscape, independently of plant species taxonomic identity. Such an approach offers promising perspectives in both drug discovery programs and conservation efforts worldwide.Keywords
Funding Information
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (31003A-179481)
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (31003A-159869)
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (31003A-162604)
This publication has 52 references indexed in Scilit:
- Honokiol: A non-adipogenic PPARγ agonist from natureBiochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - General Subjects, 2013
- Ethnobotanical approach versus random approach in the search for new bioactive compounds: Support of a hypothesisPharmaceutical Biology, 2011
- adephylo: new tools for investigating the phylogenetic signal in biological traitsBioinformatics, 2010
- Picante: R tools for integrating phylogenies and ecologyBioinformatics, 2010
- Evidence for adaptive radiation from a phylogenetic study of plant defensesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- The evolution of antiherbivore defenses and their contribution to species coexistence in the tropical tree genusIngaProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- Macroevolutionary chemical escalation in an ancient plant–herbivore arms raceProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- Clustering Millions of Tandem Mass SpectraJournal of Proteome Research, 2007
- The use of ‘altitude’ in ecological researchTrends in Ecology & Evolution, 2007
- Consequences of changing biodiversityNature, 2000