Ecological and evolutionary responses of plants to environmental change

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The responses of plant populations and communities to environmental change involve interactions between ecological and evolutionary processes.  Understanding these processes presents a fundamental scientific challenge and determines our ability to predict and manage the natural ecosystems upon which people depend.  The traits of organisms (e.g., their size, or time of flowering) determine how environmental conditions influence performance.  Because such traits vary both within and among species, they provide a natural common currency for assessment of eco-evolutionary responses to environmental change.  Within species, organismal responses involve two processes: phenotypic plasticity, which can allow traits such as flowering time to respond rapidly to local conditions (e.g., within a single growing season), and adaptive evolution, which requires sufficient time for birth and death to result in genetic change at the population level.  Phenotypic plasticity complicates our ability to easily track evolutionary change explicitly through time, and moreover, plastic responses in different populations can influence gene flow between those populations, and thus local adaptation.  The research proposed here aims to assess the action of these processes in nature, testing key hypotheses concerning relatively unexplored aspects of plant population and community responses to environmental change.