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

人类活动通过改变自然干扰制度和营养物质的可得性，正在深刻地改变全世界的生态系统。预测人类活动对生物多样性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的反应不同。该项目解决了一个尚未探索的机制，用于观察到群落之间高度可变的反应，即一个地区物种特征的多样性。该项目将对生物多样性对人类干扰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项目，同时推进人为改变的生态系统的保护、管理和恢复。活动将包括一个研讨会，汇集来自地方、州和联邦机构的土地管理者和科学家，以确定和讨论保护和恢复方面的主要挑战；高中学生、教师和本科生的科学和实地研究培训；并向高中教师传播了一个以环境恢复和可持续发展为重点的课堂模块。研究人员将进行一项景观尺度的野外实验，以研究为什么奥扎克森林生态系统中植物群落的多样性和组成会随着火灾和养分有效性而变化。在这个大规模的实验中，植物群落将从种子、根、茎和叶特征多样性不同的物种池中聚集起来。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。这种多尺度方法将促进我们对物种特征多样性的区域变化、景观尺度干扰和环境条件的局部变化如何独立和相互作用地塑造生物多样性模式的理解。

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.