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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Corvallis, Oregon » Horticultural Crops Disease and Pest Management Research Unit » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #419855
Research Project: Knowledge Based Tools for Exotic and Emerging Diseases of Small Fruit and Nursery Crops

Location: Horticultural Crops Disease and Pest Management Research Unit

Title: Genomic demography predicts community dynamics in a temperate montane forest

Author
item O’DWYER, JAMES - University Of Illinois
item LUTZ, JAMES - Utah State University
item SCHAPPE, TYLER - Duke University School Of Medicine
item ALEGRE, DANA - Oregon State University
item BLACK, ANDREW - Oregon State University
item Grunwald, Niklaus
item JONES, F. ANDREW - Oregon State University

Submitted to: Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/13/2025
Publication Date: 9/18/2025
Citation: O’Dwyer, J.P., Lutz, J.A., Schappe, T., Alegre, D., Black, A.N., Grünwald, N.J., Jones, F. 2025. Genomic demography predicts community dynamics in a temperate montane forest. Science. 389(6766). Article eadu6396. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu6396.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu6396

Interpretive Summary: Ecological observations show that population sizes of plants in ecosystems fluctuate over time. Predicting the amplitude andfrequency of these temporal fluctuations is difficult. We developed a mathematical approach combining census data on changes in populations over time with data on the genetic history based on DNA analysis. This novel approach shows promise for predicting multispecies community changes in space and time.

Technical Abstract: Species population sizes fluctuate over time. The amplitude and frequency of these temporal dynamics play a key role in governing the maintenance of biodiversity, and yet we lack an effective approach to predict population fluctuation sizes before they occur. Multiple modeling approaches have been developed to characterize fluctuations in forest communities by incorporating demographic noise, life history variation, and couplings to environment variables. But the data required to parametrize these models from scratch are substantial, requiring multiple censuses over decades for long-lived plants. Here we introduce a novel approach to modeling population fluctuations, leveraging the relationship between community-level dynamics and population-level patterns encoded in plant genomes. Using a single genomic snapshot to generate contemporary effective population size estimates in a temperate montane forest, we develop a mean field model of species dynamics, and accurately predict fluctuations across three censuses. Our approach opens the door for the use of genomic demography to parametrize multispecies community models in ecology, and shows that population genomic data can provide accurate predictions for ecological dynamics.