OPUS: The Role of the Environment in Shaping Plant Diversity from Global to Local Scales

气候在空间和时间上对生物多样性的影响最大。然而，气候有多个方面（例如，降雨量、温度、季节性）以及它们如何相互作用以确定生活在一个地区的不同物种的数量，目前还没有很好的了解。该研究项目的主要目标是更好地了解气候如何以及为什么与其他影响相互作用，以塑造自然植物群落的物种多样性。这些信息对于提高我们预测未来植物多样性可能如何变化的能力非常重要。研究人员将回顾和综合20年来对加州植物区系省植物多样性的实验和观察工作，以全面了解从地方到全球范围内塑造生物多样性的机制。该项目还将向公众提供有用的数据集，并将支持对土地管理人员和公众进行植物多样性教育的努力。这一综合的重点将是更好地了解气候如何在多个层面（物种，功能，系统发育）和空间尺度（当地的生物群落），单独或与其他因素（土壤，火，食草动物，入侵）的相互作用，植物多样性的形状模式。要探讨的主题包括为什么地中海气候主机高植物多样性，植物多样性将如何在未来的气候变化，以及植物功能性状是否可以用来测试气候多样性关系的耐受性假设。这一综合的产品将包括几篇关于气候多样性关系的未充分探索方面的评论论文，介绍三个多地点和多年植物群落和环境数据集的数据出版物，以及普林斯顿系列的植物多样性专著。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Climate is the strongest influence on biological diversity in space and time. However, there are multiple aspect to climate (e.g., rainfall, temperature, seasonality) and how they interact to determine the number of different species living in a region is not well understood. The main objective of this research project is to achieve a better understanding of how and why climate interacts with other influences to shape the species diversity of natural plant communities. This information is important to improving our capacity to forecast how plant diversity is likely to change in the future. The researcher will review and synthesize 20 years of experimental and observational work on plant diversity in the California Floristic Province, to provide an overarching understanding of the mechanisms that shape biodiversity, from local to global scales. The project will also make useful data sets publicly available and will support efforts to educate land managers and the public about plant diversity. The focus of this synthesis will be to better understand how climate shapes patterns of plant diversity at multiple levels (species, functional, phylogenetic) and spatial scales (local to biome), alone or in interaction with other factors (soils, fire, herbivores, invasions). Topics to be explored include why Mediterranean climates host high plant diversity, how plant diversity will change under future climate, and whether plant functional traits can be used to test the tolerance hypothesis for climate-diversity relationships. Products of this synthesis will include several review papers on underexplored aspects of the climate-diversity relationships, data publications presenting three multisite and multiyear plant community and environmental data sets, and a monograph on plant diversity for the Princeton series.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.