Despite being one of the most biologically diverse habitats on the planet, the description of tropical rain forests and the understanding of their evolutionary history are far from complete. Furthermore, there is an increasing need for assessing global biodiversity changes especially in tropical rainforests, due to their role as global biodiversity repositories. West Central Africa represents the area of greatest biodiversity richness within tropical Africa and with the highest percentage of untouched pristine forest for the whole of Africa and Madagascar. West Central African biodiversity not only faces the challenges of climate change, but also human pressure with the highest population growth rates in the world. This project will contribute to the ongoing Global Legume Diversity Assessment programme, that is being developed to improve our understanding of biodiversity loss using legumes, the third largest family of angiosperms, as a proxy. The project will focus on tribe Detarieae, which are the dominant component of West Central African forests, and thus an ideal exemplar clade for the proposed study. The project aims at reconstructing phylogenetic relationships within Detarieae and produce a temporal framework for the diversification of the group. The phylogenetic diversity patterns will be investigated to identify hotspots of recent speciation and evolutionary diversity and their correlation with land use changes, biodiversity loss, and extinction risks. The project also includes a full IUCN conservation assessment for all studied species, thus obtaining an indication of survivability for Detarieae in West Central Africa under climate change while considering different emission scenarios proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Given that the legume family has been shown to be a good proxy for botanical diversity in general, the results obtained here will be invaluable for the preservation of biodiversity in this region of the world.

As a consequence of anthropogenic climate change, it has been hypothesized that human-mediated deforestation degraded closed-canopy forest into grasslands dominated by fire- and grazing-resistant grasses. There is accumulating evidence, however, that tropical grasslands are natural biomes with origins that predate human activities. The extent to which grasslands have expanded and contracted in response to natural climate cycles versus more recent agricultural practices remains an open question and is the motivation for the proposed research. MADGRASS focuses on the grasslands of central Madagascar, because identifying ancient grasslands and protecting them is of urgent conservation interest. Population genomic methods and novel bioinformatic approaches will be used to test demographic hypotheses that will identify the timing of grassland expansions and contractions, population structure, and gene flow between populations. Research goals are made possible by recent advances in the analysis of polyploid species, which will be implemented through MADGRASS. There are direct conservation policy outcomes expected from MADGRASS. Currently, tree-planting programs are attempting to re-forest the grasslands of central Madagascar. These programs often include invasive tree species that grow quickly and require more water than is available, which can unintentionally lead to increased frequency and intensity of fires and overall detrimental outcomes. We will identify the range of Madagascar’s natural grasslands that should be protected. Results will also be used to identify which grasslands should be released from protected status for community and commercial use, building respect and trust with local Malagasy people. All aspects of the proposed research will be conducted in close collaboration with Malagasy colleagues and include specific outreach activities for both local communities in Madagascar and broader scientific and lay groups.

Compounded by habitat fragmentation and the pervasive impact of climate change, biodiversity, particularly in global biodiversity hotspots, faces an uncertain future. Orchids, among the most threatened plant groups in the world, have symbiotic associations with soil fungi in order to establish new individuals from seeds. Yet this important interaction between orchids and fungi is poorly understood in the context of rapid environmental change. The FORECAST project will provide a detailed investigation into the symbiotic relationship between a high profile orchid group of high conservation concern in Mediterranean habitats in Australia, the spider orchids, (genus Caladenia) and their fungal associates, using a combination of molecular, field, and physiological experiments. This will be used as a model system to predict the response of orchids to ongoing climate change and the resilience of these fungal symbioses in degraded and natural environments. Subsequently, during the incoming phase, the project will transfer the skills and perspectives learned from the outgoing phase and focus on members of European orchid Anacamptis in the Mediterranean. The fellowship will be hosted by Prof. Michael F. Fay at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew with a two year outgoing period at the Curtin University of Western Australia under the supervision of Prof. Kingsley W. Dixon, one of the world’s leading experts in the field of orchid ecology and conservation. I will learn state-of-the-art techniques for the study of orchid mycorrhizal fungi in Australia and transfer them to one of world’s leading botanic gardens and conservation centres, RBG Kew. This work will be facilitated by ongoing collaborations with the University of Naples Federico II. The ultimate goal of the FORECAST project is to develop new multi-faceted strategies for ongoing orchid conservation in Mediterranean habitats under climate change, thereby uniting conservation approaches in both Australia and Europe.