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

拟议的研究旨在提高我们对物种群落，特别是植物物种群落如何随着时间的推移而组装和维持的理解。生态系统和生境的物种组成因区域和生境类型而有很大差异，除非仔细考虑混杂因素，否则进化过程的影响可能被当代生态相互作用所掩盖。拟议的研究将解决这个问题，提供关键的背景下，确定社区集会的生态和历史过程中的作用。这一努力将带来一个独特的和前所未有的数据集，以承担社区生态学的核心问题，同时有助于了解面临气候变化和入侵物种压力增加的敏感生物群落。该框架引入的历史视角将显著提高对地方和大陆尺度上植物多样性和群落结构模式的理解，并为未来的群落结构研究提供模式。拟议的研究将结合联合收割机系统发育数据和氖数据，对物种的发生、丰度、和性状，以测试生态和历史过程在管理植物群落组装的相对作用。这包括评估已建立的社区如何容纳或抵制非本地物种的各个方面。三个具体的问题将得到解决，重点是木本多年生植物（如树木，灌木，仙人掌，藤本植物）：（1）历史进程如何塑造社区结构的模式？(2)物种的功能特性是如何塑造群落结构模式的？(3)近亲物种的群落是否更容易受到外来物种的入侵？分析将使用广泛的生态和进化的比较和分析计算方法。对于系统发育分析，PI将通过首先挖掘GenBank数据库中的生物学可用序列来获得每个NEON采样地块内记录的所有木本多年生植物的序列数据，并将通过使用从植物标本馆样本中获得的组织样本生成新序列来填补任何缺失的数据。

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.