SG: Environmental variation and optimal plant life history strategies of perennial plants

一个物种如何以及何时生长和繁殖被称为它的生活史策略。植物生活史策略的表现取决于温度、降雨量和土壤养分。这些环境条件在世界各地每年都有所不同。在很长一段时间内，一个物种的生活史策略适应温度，降雨量和其他环境条件的范围在一个位置。适应沙漠的植物不一定适应雨林，反之亦然。当特定地点的环境条件发生变化时，物种的生活史策略可能不再适应新的条件，其种群增长率可能会受到影响。一个植物物种也许能够进化出一种新的策略，在变化的环境中更好地发挥作用，但适应的速度可能跟不上快速的环境变化。在这种情况下，当地的种群将减少，增加物种灭绝的风险。社会需要预测哪些植物最容易受到环境变化的影响，以有效地将稀缺资源分配给物种保护。这项研究使用数学模型来预测生活在不同环境中的植物物种的最佳生活史策略，并量化一个物种对环境变化的适应程度。如果不测量植物在许多年中在各种环境条件下的生长和繁殖，就很难预测环境快速变化对植物生活史的影响。这样的长期数据集非常罕见，但在这项研究中，研究人员将利用一个长达30年的关于植物物种黄芪（Astragalus scaphoides）生长和繁殖的数据集，来测试他们的模型产生的预测。这项研究结合了植物生态学和数学建模，并将为研究生和本科生在这两个学科的培训。研究人员将构建预测生活史策略的通用模型，以最大限度地提高生命周期繁殖或人口增长率的适应性。假设自然选择选择最大化适应性的基因型，优化模型预测各种环境条件下的最佳生活史策略。具体而言，模型将回答以下问题：（1）什么资源分配策略（生长，储存，繁殖）和休眠频率优化多年生植物在不同环境条件（养分供应，温度，降水）下的适合度？(2)快速变化的环境条件对适应性的影响是什么？此外，研究人员将使用一个长期的数据集的性能多年生植物，A。舟状骨，测试模型的预测，问：（3）观察到的温度和降水量的变化足以产生负面影响植物的健身？

How and when a species grows and reproduces is called its life history strategy. The performance of a plant's life history strategy depends on temperature, rainfall and soil nutrients. These environmental conditions vary around the world and from year to year. Over a long period of time, the life history strategy of a species adapts to the ranges of temperature, rainfall and other environmental conditions at a location. A plant adapted to do well in a desert may not be well adapted to live in a rain forest, and vice versa. When environmental conditions in a particular location change, a species' life history strategy may no longer be adapted to the new conditions, and its population growth rate may suffer. A plant species may be able to evolve a new strategy that works better in the changed environment, but the rate of adaptation may not keep pace with rapid environmental change. In that case local populations will shrink, increasing the risk of the species' extinction. Society needs to predict which plants are most at risk from changed environments to efficiently allocate scarce resources to species conservation. This study uses mathematical models to predict the best life history strategy for plant species living different environments, and to quantify how poorly adapted a species is to a change in the environment. Testing predictions of the effects of rapid environmental change on plant life history is difficult without measuring plant growth and reproduction in many years with a wide range of environmental conditions. Such long-term data sets are extremely rare, but in this study researchers will make use of a 30 year-long data set on the growth and reproduction of the plant species bitterroot milkvetch (Astragalus scaphoides), to test the predictions generated by their models. This research combines plant ecology and mathematical modeling, and will provide training for graduate and undergraduate students in both disciplines. The researchers will construct general models predicting life history strategies that maximize fitness measured as life time reproduction or population growth rate. Assuming natural selection selects for genotypes that maximize fitness, optimization models predict optimal life history strategies for various environmental conditions. Specifically, the models will answer the following questions: (1) What resource allocation strategy (growth, storage, reproduction) and dormancy frequency optimizes the fitness of perennial plants under different environmental conditions (nutrient availability, temperature, precipitation)? (2) What are the fitness consequences of rapidly changing environmental conditions? Further, the researchers will use a long term data set on performance of a perennial plant, A. scaphoides, to test the model predictions by asking: (3) Is the magnitude of observed variation in temperature and precipitation sufficient to negatively affect plant fitness?