Hierarchical Consequences of Intraspecific Variation on Community and Ecosystem Re-assembly

人类在将受干扰的环境恢复到其原始结构方面发挥着重要作用（例如，植物的组成和功能。 高草草原的恢复，特别是一个及时的问题，因为这个生态系统的大部分历史范围已被转换为农业。 尽管付出了很多努力和兴趣，但对可能影响修复成功的许多因素知之甚少。 草原草品种的广泛商业化生产是由于努力开发最适合控制侵蚀的本土植物。 商业生产选择旺盛的性状以增加植物的建立。 然而，这些特征可能会增加植物相对于来自原生草原的同种植物的竞争能力。 将在伊利诺斯州南部的一个农田里，用主要草原草的栽培品种或原生草原来源与草原野花的混合物沿着建立实验地块。 该实验将监测植物性状四年，并评估草的来源（即，栽培品种和原生草原）影响其他物种的建立（即，野花）和恢复过程中发生的其他重要过程，如整体植物生长和土壤健康的改善。 另外两个地点在伊利诺伊州中部和堪萨斯，包含类似的实验地块，将进行监测，以概括的结果，高草草原地区作为一个整体。虽然品种被广泛用于草原植被，长期的后果（社区组装和生态系统恢复）恢复栖息地引入潜在的更具竞争力的植物是未知的。 如果栽培品种是上级竞争者，它们可能会增加恢复对生物多样性至关重要的数量较少的非草物种的难度。 一旦从种子混合物中确定植物组成，其性质几乎不可逆转，这就强调了需要关于用于植物繁殖的物种的生态影响的信息。 这对于高草草原尤其重要，在那里恢复各种物种是很难实现的。

Humans play an important role in restoring disturbed environments to their original structure (e.g., composition of vegetation) and function. Tallgrass prairie restoration, in particular is a timely issue because most of the historic extent of this ecosystem has been converted to agriculture. Despite much effort and interest, little is known about many factors that could influence restoration success. Widespread commercial production of prairie grass cultivars has resulted from efforts to develop native plants best for erosion control. Commercial production selects for vigorous traits to increase plant establishment. These traits, however, may increase the competitive ability of plants relative to plants of the same species from native prairie. Experimental plots will be established with cultivar or native prairie sources of the dominant prairie grasses along with a mix of prairie wildflowers in an agricultural field in southern Illinois. This experiment will monitor plant traits for four years and evaluate whether sources of grasses (i.e., cultivar and native prairie) influence the establishment of other species (i.e., wildflowers) and the recovery of other important processes that occur during restoration such as overall plant growth and improvements in soil health. Two additional sites in central Illinois and Kansas, containing similar experimental plots, will be monitored to generalize results to the tallgrass prairie region as a whole. Although cultivars are widely used in prairie restorations, the long-term consequences (for community assembly and ecosystem recovery) of restoring habitats by introducing potentially more competitive plants are unknown. If cultivars are superior competitors, they may increase the difficulty in restoring the less abundant non-grass species that are critical to biodiversity. The nearly irreversible nature of plant composition once established from seed mixtures underscores the need for information on the ecological effects of species used in restorations. This is particularly relevant to tallgrass prairie, where restoring a variety of species is difficult to achieve.