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

本行动资助NSF 2019年度生物学博士后研究奖学金，利用生物馆藏进行研究。该奖学金支持研究和培训将以创新的方式利用生物收集的研究员。人类对全球进程的快速改变和全球生态系统的退化导致了第六次大灭绝事件。为了抵消这些后果，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处于领先地位。实现这些目标具有挑战性，确定受威胁和濒危植物对重新引入地点环境条件的反应如何影响重新引入结果可以大大改善保护实践。然而，人们仍然缺乏开展这些工作所必需的对受威胁和濒危植物特征的基本了解。为了解决这个问题，该研究员将专注于利用现存植物收藏中包含的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，这是对这些未充分利用的资源的一种新利用。为了与更广泛的社区建立联系，该研究员将指导生物科学领域代表性不足的本科生，并为K-12学生和公众开发一个关于受威胁和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进的影响。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上，但大多数研究在直接做到这一点的能力上受到限制，因为它们不排除竞争。该研究员将使用夏威夷的受威胁和濒危物种重新引进，在那里竞争被排除在外，作为一个模型系统来测试环境过滤对植物性能的影响。利用这一方法和现存的受威胁和濒危植物收集的数据，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普通入侵物种有何不同？（Q2）受威胁和濒危植物重新引入的结果背后的因素是什么？（Q3）性状多维度如何为有效的濒危植物再引进设计提供信息？该项目将有助于更深入地了解物种的性状综合征如何介导非生物梯度的表现，同时改善世界范围内受威胁和濒危植物的再引入。这些活动将通过提供使用建模方法的培训来确定特征多维度如何推动社区集会，从而大大扩展研究员的专门知识。此外，该研究员将为本科生和研究生开发一个实践培训讲习班，重点是将植物功能特性整合到恢复和重新引入项目中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，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.