In areas heavily impacted by pollution, researchers from the University of Cincinnati have detected significant genetic diversity among common cattails. Their findings provide evidence that cattails might be an indicator of environmental stress within a given ecosystem. The study, led by plant biologist Steven Rogstad, chose to examine cattails for several reasons. Cattails have a wide range of ecological tolerance, distributed widely from the Arctic Circle to the tropics. In addition, cattails exhibit great morphological complexity that is close to the complexity found in humans.
Plants can also be useful in recording the history of mutation stress at a given site.
Next, they sampled cattail population sites known to be contaminated with fuels, solvents and other organic chemicals on the Wurtsmith Air Force Base in northeastern Michigan. Cattails growing in polluted sites were the most genetically diverse. Leaf samples from the various sites were returned to UC labs where complex DNA sequencing patterns were extracted for comparison. By sampling a wide area in the Midwest and a site known to be polluted, the researches hoped to get a better picture of the genetic diversity in cattails and to determine if changes in genetic diversity could be an indicator of environmental stress. The researchers were surprised to find that the cattails growing in the most polluted sites had the greatest genetic diversity.