Plant adaptation and the trait-based prediction of plant distribution and abundance

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The ecoregions across Canada provide the diversity underpinning our natural heritage. Their fundamental visual and biological character is set by their vegetation, from barren tundra through expansive grasslands to dense forests. Plant ecology has a long history of descriptive studies classifying vegetation into communities arrayed along environmental gradients. From studies of plant function and adaptation, we also have some idea why species prosper in some environments and die out in others. For example, we understand reasonably well adaptations to factors such as winter temperature or risk of drought that set limits on the geographic ranges of species. We understand much less well the adaptations that affect the structure of plant communities. We can neither predict which species will be common or rare, nor the relative abundance of a species in a particular environmental regime. Such predictions are critical to developing well-founded policies for the sustainable management of our forests and wildlife habitat, and for protecting endangered plant and animal species. Descriptive studies alone are insufficient for predicting how plant communities will respond to challenges such climate change and invasion by non-native species. Plant ecologists fortunately have begun to develop objective, quantitative methods for predicting the responses of plant communities to changes in their environment and in the regional species pool from which species in the community are drawn. I will test and refine a theory to predict the distribution and abundance of plant species based on the value of traits that characterize the differing adaptations of species. Two critical questions require attention: 1) at a given spatial scale what sort of traits yield better predictions and 2) how should the pool of native and exotic species from which communities assemble be defined at different spatial scales. This work will advance scientific understanding of both plant adaptation and community dynamics as well as strengthening the quantitative foundation for regulatory policy in the areas of climate change and biodiversity.