Excellent new paper out this week led by former postdoc (now NC State Assistant Professor) @aceraceae.bsky.social. "Local adaptation of both plant and pathogen: an arms-race compromise in switchgrass rust." nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... - ThreadSky

davidlowry.bsky.social • 1 day ago

Excellent new paper out this week led by former postdoc (now NC State Assistant Professor) @aceraceae.bsky.social. "Local adaptation of both plant and pathogen: an arms-race compromise in switchgrass rust." https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.70313

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davidlowry.bsky.social•1 day ago

One of the really nice aspects of the paper is that Acer did an amazing job setting up a new framework for studying local adaptation in plant-parasite interactions.

davidlowry.bsky.social•1 day ago

In a previous study, Acer found that there were different QTL effects for rust resistance in northern vs southern field site of our big switchgrass collaboration. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.16555

davidlowry.bsky.social•1 day ago

There are multiple hypotheses that could explain that result, including that the rust pathogen genotypes are different in the north and the south. This is exactly what we found through population genomic analyses of the rust.

davidlowry.bsky.social•1 day ago

This is actually surprising, as the prevailing wisdom was that rust pathogen spores travel from the south to the north each year through air flow because they cannot survive winter.

davidlowry.bsky.social•1 day ago

The immense amount of data on rust infection across hundreds of genotypes at nine field sites (stretching from South Texas to South Dakota) is it major strength. There was tons of variation both among field sites and among genotypes.

davidlowry.bsky.social•1 day ago

One of the most important results of the study was that while switchgrass plants have higher fitness in their home geographic region, they are also more susceptible to pathogens from their home region. The plant are locally adapted and the pathogens are as well.

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