LTREB: Adding the Temporal Component to our Understanding of Species Diversity in a Spatially Heterogeneous and Invaded Grassland System

我的项目旨在了解草原的多样性和组成如何随着降雨量和其他环境条件的变化而逐年变化。 特别是，我想知道对大多数物种不利的年份，例如比平均年份更干燥的年份，是否对某些少数物种有利。 例如，竞争力差但耐旱的物种，在干旱年份与其他物种竞争减少的好处可能比干旱条件直接使它们处于不利地位的好处更多。 如果这是真的，那么条件的年度变化有助于群落的总多样性，考虑到最近人为增加的气候变异性和极端气候，理解这种关系尤为重要。 本研究的网站和数据将通过多种途径免费提供给其他研究人员。这项研究将支持和培训若干人员;我的实验室在培训妇女和少数民族作为研究生和博士后研究人员方面有着出色的记录。该项目雇用的学生将为McLaughlin UC自然保护区的环境教育计划做出贡献，该保护区为许多低收入和少数民族学生提供服务。

My project aims to understand how the diversity and composition of grasslands changes from year to year with changes in rainfall and other environmental conditions. In particular, I would like to know whether years that are unfavorable for the majority of species, such as drier than average years, are predictably beneficial to a certain minority of species. For example, species that are poor competitors, but that are drought-tolerant, may benefit more from the reduction in competition with other species in a dry year than they are directly disadvantaged by the dry conditions. To the extent that this is true, then yearly variation in conditions contributes to the total diversity of a community, and this relationship is particularly important to understand given the recent anthropogenic increase in climatic variability and climatic extremes. The sites and data from this study will be made freely available to other researchers through several avenues. The study will support and train several personnel; my laboratory has an excellent record of training women and minorities as graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. The students employed by this project will contribute to environmental education programs at the McLaughlin UC Natural Reserve, which serves a community with many lower-income and minority students.