EAGER-NEON: Disentangling the Roles of Ecological and Historical Processes in Community Structure: A Continental-Scale Approach

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The proposed research aims to improve our understanding of how communities of species, particularly plant species, are assembled and maintained over time. The species composition of ecosystems and habitats varies significantly by region and habitat type, and the effects of evolutionary processes can be obscured by contemporary ecological interactions unless confounding factors are carefully considered. The proposed research will address this problem by providing critical context for identifying the roles of ecological and historical processes in community assembly. This effort will bring a unique and unprecedented dataset to bear on central questions in community ecology while contributing to the understanding of sensitive biomes facing increased pressure from climate change and invasive species. The historical perspective introduced by the proposed framework will significantly improve the understanding of plant diversity and patterns of community structure at both local and continental scales, and serve as a model for future studies of community structure.The proposed research will combine phylogenetic data with NEON data on species occurrence, abundance, and traits to test the relative roles of ecological and historical processes in governing plant community assembly. This includes evaluation of aspects of how established communities either accommodate or resist non-native species. Three specific questions will be addressed, focusing on woody perennials (e.g. trees, shrubs, cactuses, lianas): (1) How have historical processes shaped patterns of community structure? (2) How have species functional traits shaped patterns of community structure? (3) Are communities of closely related species more susceptible to non-native species invasion? Analyses will be conducted using a broad array of ecological and evolutionary comparative and analytical computational methods. For phylogenetic analyses, the PIs will obtain sequence data for all woody perennials recorded within each NEON-sampled plot by first mining the GenBank database for publically available sequences, and will fill in any missing data by generating new sequences using tissue samples obtained from herbarium samples.