Coevolution of plants and soils: a comparative approach

This micro-CT video shows the internal structure of a soil with associated cryptogamic (moss, lichen) ground cover. Non-destructive imaging techniques like micro-CT allow us to categorise and document the internal structure and components of these micro-soils.

Principal Investigator

Dr Paul Kenrick

Project summary

Focus: Characterising and analysing modern soils, and comparing them with ancient soils.
Funding: internal

We are comparing 400-million-year-old fossil soils and modern analogues to learn more about the early evolution of life on land.

Interpreting early soils requires a better understanding of modern analogues, particularly soils associated with lichens, moss, liverwort and lycopod plant communities.

By characterising and analysing modern soils we can:

recognise primitive soils in the geological record
determine their impact on major geochemical cycles
understand how the first soils co-evolved with biological components such as fungi and plants

Results

Our study of recent soils informs the wider understanding of fossil soils and their environments.

Lycopods growing on some geothermal substrates near to a hot spring in New Zealand, an example of primitive plants colonizing extreme environments.

Our research supports the theory that early soils were:

formed of communities of cyanobacteria, fungi, lichens, small rootless plants
mostly thin (millimetre and centimetre scale)
inhabited by diverse but minute arthropods
already host to sophisticated symbioses among fungi, cyanobacteria, algae and plants

We are also studying specimens of 400-million-year-old Rhynie chert held in the Museum collections. These exceptionally well-preserved sediments from Scotland record associations between a diverse range of organisms.