What if scientists resurrect actual specimens and compare their features with their modern-day descendants? That's a notion that has University of Toronto biologists helping to create a seed bank that will let future researchers do exactly that with plants, allowing them to measure evolution caused by global change. "Today's plants are the ancestors of future generations," says Arthur Weis, a U of T ecology and evolutionary biologist and director of the Koffler Scientific Reserve. "Decades from now, plant biologists can go to the same populations as we are collecting from now and collect seeds from 'descendant' generations. By growing the ancestor seeds and descendant seeds under the same conditions, they will be able to detect which traits have changed and which have not." The Koffler Scientific Reserve will be the anchor location for the Canadian effort. It will also collect seeds of several additional species of local concern, including Black-eyed Susan, Queen Ann's lace and Trillium plants. Also this seeds could be helpful if the plant species goes extinct in the future. We could use the ones we store to bring the species back.
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