Has information about Soy beans and how they have been modified by humans and how that affects the biodiversity of the ecosystem.

1. Soy Beans By: Carlos Alvarado Nicole Enriquez Santiago Gariepy Joe Reyes

2. Soy Beans Scientific Name is Glycine max Soy beans are a leguminous plant (meaning they belong to the pea family, Leguminosae) As part of being a leguminous plant they have their seeds in a pod. They come in different sizes and different coat colors. The different coat colors include black, brown, blue, yellow, and mottled.

3. Ecosystem Soy beans are native to East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) Since then soy beans have spread to many other parts of the world including the Americas and Europe They are tropical plants but can adapt to man other climates Soy beans grow well in nutrient-rich soils and in slightly acidic soils, pH of 6.5

4. Evolutionary History The ancestor that all soy beans (Glycine max) come from is a wild legume plant called Glycinesoja The main difference between the two is a genetic alteration, the domesticated beans don’t burst their pod opens to scatter out their seeds like the wild ones did. The cause for this difference in traits is that when the seeds became domesticated they no longer had a need to spread their seed to available resources since all they needed was already there.

5. Selective Pressures by Humans The biggest selective pressure humans have placed on the soybeans is the introduction of genetically modified soybeans. Genetically modified are made by inserting a herbicide resistant gene from a bacteria into the soybean which will make the soybean resistant to herbicide as well.

6. Selective Pressures by Humans The reasons this is a selective pressure is because once these GM plants were introduced into the farms , they produced more offspring. Out of the offspring humans would only select the genetically modified ones to reproduce thus lowering the number of non-GM offspring available. After many generations of reproduction most if not all soybean plants produced GM beans due to the human selection of only GM plants.

7. How the species has changed Due to human selection of GM soy beans, the majority of the beans are now herbicide resistant. 93% of soybeans grown in the U.S. are herbicide resistant 77% of soybeans around the world are genetically modified.

8. Impacts on Biodiversity Soy beans affected the diversity by being the major type of soybean plant in the fields. It makes the ratio of GM to normal unbalanced. The other big impact is that now with herbicide resistant plants, farmers are no longer afraid to spray lots of herbicide. With more herbicide many other wild plants and insects in the area will die.

9. Human Impacts on Ecosystem Humans have greatly impacted the ecosystem in which soybeans live in. Soybeans started off in the tropics of East Asia but with time humans have spread them all over the world. Nowadays most soybeans are found in farms all over the world.

10. Future Impacts The future impacts on biodiversity is that eventually due to human selection most plants will be GM since the normal plants will eventually start to die off. The impacts on humans is that most humans that eat soybeans, even of they eat natural ones will eventually have access to GM beans. They can then remove this from their diet or they can switch to GM which has some implications that come with it.

11. Audience The audience we chose was an audience that would care for plants and vegetables since they themselves plant and grow both. We chose to talk to the wonderful people at the grow house right across from Bioscience, about our project and what we learned.