NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Restoring tropical ecosystems using the wealth of information in rare plant collections

这一行动为NSF 2019财年生物学博士后研究奖学金-使用生物收藏进行研究-提供资金。该奖学金支持将以创新方式利用生物收藏的研究员的研究和培训。人类对全球进程的迅速改变和世界各地生态系统的退化导致了第六次大规模灭绝事件。为了抵消这些结果，植物园和植物园在保护和重新引入受威胁和濒危植物物种方面发挥着带头作用。实现这些目标是具有挑战性的，确定受威胁和濒危植物对重新引入地点的环境条件的反应如何影响重新引入的结果可以极大地改善保护实践。然而，对于进行这些努力所必需的受威胁和濒危植物的特征，仍然缺乏基本的了解。为了解决这个问题，这位研究员将专注于利用活的植物学收藏中包含的关于受威胁和濒危植物物种的丰富信息来了解植物重新引入的结果，这是对这些未得到充分利用的资源的一种新用途。为了与更广泛的社区建立联系，该研究员将指导在生物科学领域代表性不足的本科生，并为K-12学生和普通公众开发一个关于濒危植物保护的教育模块。该项目的总体目标是确定环境过滤对热带受威胁和濒危木本植物重新引入的影响。许多研究都集中在环境过滤器在构建植物群落中的重要性，但大多数研究都限制了它们直接做到这一点的能力，因为它们不排除竞争。这位研究员将使用夏威夷受威胁和濒危的重新引入(不包括竞争)作为一个模型系统，以测试环境过滤对植物性能的影响。使用这种方法，以及来自活的受威胁和濒危植物收藏的数据，该研究员将解决以下问题：(Q1)夏威夷受威胁和濒危植物物种拥有的功能策略范围与常见的入侵物种有何不同？(Q2)受威胁和濒危植物重新引种的结果背后有哪些因素？(Q3)性状的多维性如何影响有效的濒危植物重新引入的设计？该项目将导致更彻底地了解物种的特征综合症如何在非生物梯度上调节表现，同时改善世界各地受威胁和濒危植物的重新引入。这些活动将通过提供使用建模方法的培训来显著扩展研究员的专业知识，以确定特征的多维性如何驱动社区集会。此外，该研究员将为本科生和研究生开发一个实践培训工作坊，专注于将植物功能特征整合到恢复和重新引入项目中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. Rapid human alteration of global processes and the degradation of ecosystems worldwide have led to a sixth mass-extinction event. To counteract these outcomes, botanical gardens and arboreta are leading the charge in the conservation and reintroduction of threatened and endangered plant species. Achieving these goals is challenging and determining how reintroduction outcomes are influenced by responses of threatened and endangered plants to environmental conditions at reintroduction sites could greatly improve conservation practice. However, there is still lack a basic understanding of the characteristics of threatened and endangered plants necessary to undertake these efforts. To address this, the fellow will focus on using the wealth of information on threatened and endangered plant species contained in living botanical collections to understand plant reintroduction outcomes, a novel use of these underutilized resources. To connect with the broader community the fellow will mentor undergraduate students underrepresented in the biological sciences and develop an education module on threatened and endangered plant conservation for K-12 students and the general public. The overall goal of this project is to determine the effects of environmental filtering on tropical threatened and endangered woody plant reintroductions. Many studies have focused on the importance of environmental filters in structuring plant communities, but most are limited in their ability to do so directly because they do not exclude competition. The fellow will use Hawaiian threatened and endangered reintroductions, where competition is excluded, as a model system to test the effects of environmental filtering on plant performance. Using this approach, and data from living threatened and endangered plant collections, the fellow will address the following questions: (Q1) How do the range of functional strategies possessed by Hawaiian threatened and endangered plant species differ from common invasive species? (Q2) What factors underlie threatened and endangered plant reintroduction outcomes? (Q3) How can trait multidimensionality inform the design of effective threatened and endangered plant reintroductions? This project will lead to a more thorough understanding of how species' trait syndromes mediate performance along abiotic gradients, while improving threatened and endangered plant reintroductions worldwide. These activities will significantly expand the fellow's expertise by providing training in the use of modeling approaches to determine how trait multidimensionality drives community assembly. Additionally, the fellow will develop a hands-on training workshop for undergraduate and graduate students focused on integrating plant functional traits into restoration and reintroduction projects.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.