Integrating species traits into species pools: A multi-scale approach to understanding community assembly

人类活动正在通过改变自然干扰机制和营养物质的供应，深刻地改变世界各地的生态系统。预测人类活动对生物多样性的影响的能力仍然很差，因为生物多样性对环境条件的类似变化有不同的反应。该项目解决了一个未探索的机制，观察到的高度可变的社区之间的反应，这是在一个地区的物种性状的多样性。 该项目将为生物多样性对人类扰动的反应提供新的见解。它将通过应用研究成果和新的教育和培训计划，同时促进人类改变的生态系统的保护，管理和恢复。活动将包括举办一个讲习班，将地方、州和联邦机构的土地管理人员和科学家聚集在一起，确定和讨论保护和恢复方面的关键挑战;对高中生、教师和本科生进行科学和实地研究方面的培训;并向高中教师传播一个侧重于环境恢复和可持续性的课堂模块。研究人员将进行一个景观-规模的实地实验，以研究为什么植物群落的多样性和组成的变化，在火灾和养分的可用性在欧扎克森林生态系统。在这个大规模的实验中，植物群落将从种子、根、茎和叶性状多样性不同的物种库中组装起来。实验数据将与空间分析和模拟模型相结合，以测试性状多样性如何影响植物群落组装的生态过程的相对重要性。这种多尺度的方法将促进我们的物种性状多样性，小尺度干扰，以及环境条件的局部变化如何独立和相互作用的形状生物多样性模式的区域变化的理解。

Human activities are profoundly altering ecosystems worldwide through changes to natural disturbance regimes and the availability of nutrients. The ability to predict the effects of human activities on biodiversity remains poor because biodiversity responds differently to similar changes in environmental conditions. This project tackles an unexplored mechanism for observed highly variable responses among communities, which is the diversity of species traits in a region. The project will contribute new insights into the responses of biodiversity to human perturbations. It will simultaneously advance conservation, management, and restoration of human-altered ecosystems both through application of research results and through new educational and training programs. Activities will include a workshop to bring together land managers and scientists from local, state, and federal institutions to identify and discuss key challenges in conservation and restoration; training of high school students, teachers, and undergraduate students in science and field research; and dissemination of a classroom module to high school teachers focused on environmental restoration and sustainability.The researchers will conduct a landscape-scale field experiment to examine why the diversity and composition of plant communities change in response to fire and nutrient availability in Ozark forest ecosystems. Within this large-scale experiment, plant communities will be assembled from pools of species that vary in diversity of seed, root, stem, and leaf traits. Experimental data will be combined with spatial analyses and simulation models to test how trait diversity influences the relative importance of ecological processes underlying plant community assembly. This multi-scale approach will advance our understanding of how regional variation in species-trait diversity, landscape-scale disturbances, and local variation in environmental conditions independently and interactively shape patterns of biodiversity.