Claire Kostecki
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Mia Howard
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology / LSA
Program: CG
Session: Session 5 (2:40pm – 3:30pm)
Authors: Claire Kostecki, Alexis Cooper, Mia Howard
Abstract
Many leguminous plants, such as clover, acquire nitrogen through mutualisms with rhizobium bacteria. At the same time, plants produce toxins–cyanide in the case of clovers–to ward off herbivores. Despite that clovers often interact with mutualists and herbivores simultaneously and both interactions can be driven by nitrogen availability (cyanide is nitrogen-based), these two types of interactions are typically considered separately. Our study aims to analyze the effects of Rhizobium mutualist quality on cyanogenic and acyanogenic clover, as well as how cyanogenesis affects plant investment in mutualism. We will treat cyanogenic and acyanogenic clovers with Rhizobia with higher and lower mutualist quality in a randomized design, then analyze the number of nodules formed and plant growth. We expect that cyanogenic plants will perform particularly well when partnered with high quality rhizobia because of the high nitrogen demands of producing cyanide. Along these lines, we expect that cyanogenic plants will invest more resources in maintaining the mutualisms, resulting in more nodules and selection for higher quality rhizobia.
