Imprints and implications of historical contingencies in biodiversity patterns

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Globally, species' geographic distributions are being reshaped by climate change, intensification of land use, and biological invasions, and this is impacting how biodiversity is distributed on earth. Humans are being impacted by these changes, because the ecosystem services upon which we rely are moderated by various facets of biodiversity, including, for example, the diversity of functional traits within ecosystems. Accurately quantifying all facets of biodiversity, and how these vary in space and through time, is therefore a priority. Substantial progress has been made in recent years due in part to increasing availability of species distribution and trait data, and globally coordinated efforts to fill key knowledge gaps. However, our understanding of the processes governing patterns of biodiversity remains far from complete. For example, local plant diversity can be influenced in part by symbioses between plants and fungi belowground, but we currently have little understanding of what governs compatibility between plant hosts and their fungal symbionts, or why some tree species can share many of the same fungal symbionts, and others none. Answers could lie in the past: hosts that have co-occurred together for a longer period of time may be more likely to share a greater number of compatible symbionts than those that have rarely co-occurred. Such historical contingencies often leave their mark on current diversity patterns. The long-term objective of my research program is to identify and understand the conditions that promote the relative importance of historical contingencies for local diversity patterns. My short-term research objectives are to (1) explore the links between historical contingencies and variation in plant species composition within the forest plant communities of British Columbia, (2) propose and test alternative hypotheses about the diversity of ectomycorrhizal fungi that are compatible with host plant species in BC forests, and (3) determine if accounting for historical and biogeographic contingencies can improve the predictive power paleoecological reconstructions of past environmental conditions.