EAGER-NEON: Disentangling the Roles of Ecological and Historical Processes in Community Structure: A Continental-Scale Approach

这项拟议的研究旨在提高我们对物种群落，特别是植物群落是如何随着时间的推移而组装和维持的理解。生态系统和生境的物种组成因区域和生境类型而有很大差异，除非仔细考虑混杂因素，否则进化过程的影响可能会被当代生态相互作用所掩盖。拟议的研究将通过为确定生态和历史过程在社区集会中的作用提供关键背景来解决这一问题。这一努力将带来一个独特的、史无前例的数据集，与群落生态学中的核心问题有关，同时有助于理解面临气候变化和入侵物种日益增加的压力的敏感生物群。该框架引入的历史视角将显著提高对当地和大陆尺度上植物多样性和群落结构格局的理解，并将作为未来群落结构研究的模型。拟议的研究将结合物种发生、丰度和特征的霓虹灯数据，以检验生态和历史过程在控制植物群落聚集中的相对作用。这包括对已建立的群落如何适应或抵制非本地物种的方面进行评估。本课程将针对木本多年生植物(如乔木、灌木、仙人掌、藤本植物)提出三个具体问题：(1)历史进程如何塑造群落结构格局？(2)物种功能特征如何塑造群落结构格局？(3)亲缘关系密切的物种群落是否更容易受到外来物种入侵？将使用广泛的生态和进化比较和分析计算方法进行分析。对于系统发育分析，PI将通过首先在GenBank数据库中挖掘公共可用序列来获得每个霓虹灯采样区内记录的所有木本多年生植物的序列数据，并将通过使用从植物标本中获得的组织样本生成新的序列来填补任何缺失的数据。

The proposed research aims to improve our understanding of how communities of species, particularly plant species, are assembled and maintained over time. The species composition of ecosystems and habitats varies significantly by region and habitat type, and the effects of evolutionary processes can be obscured by contemporary ecological interactions unless confounding factors are carefully considered. The proposed research will address this problem by providing critical context for identifying the roles of ecological and historical processes in community assembly. This effort will bring a unique and unprecedented dataset to bear on central questions in community ecology while contributing to the understanding of sensitive biomes facing increased pressure from climate change and invasive species. The historical perspective introduced by the proposed framework will significantly improve the understanding of plant diversity and patterns of community structure at both local and continental scales, and serve as a model for future studies of community structure.The proposed research will combine phylogenetic data with NEON data on species occurrence, abundance, and traits to test the relative roles of ecological and historical processes in governing plant community assembly. This includes evaluation of aspects of how established communities either accommodate or resist non-native species. Three specific questions will be addressed, focusing on woody perennials (e.g. trees, shrubs, cactuses, lianas): (1) How have historical processes shaped patterns of community structure? (2) How have species functional traits shaped patterns of community structure? (3) Are communities of closely related species more susceptible to non-native species invasion? Analyses will be conducted using a broad array of ecological and evolutionary comparative and analytical computational methods. For phylogenetic analyses, the PIs will obtain sequence data for all woody perennials recorded within each NEON-sampled plot by first mining the GenBank database for publically available sequences, and will fill in any missing data by generating new sequences using tissue samples obtained from herbarium samples.