COS 29-2 - Global change drives opposing shifts in phylogenetic and functional diversity in grasslands worldwide

Monday, August 15, 2022

3:45 PM – 4:00 PM EDT

Location: 514A

Presenting Author(s)

KK

Kimberly Komatsu

Senior Scientist
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Edgewater, MD, United States

Coauthor(s)

MA

Meghan L. Avolio

Assistant Professor
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD, United States
HA

Harold Auge

iDiv, Germany
JC

Jeannine Cavender-Bares

University of Minnesota, United States
HF

Habacuc Flores

Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network, Australia
MG

Magda Garbowski

University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming, United States
EG

Emily Grman

Associate professor
Eastern Michigan University, Michigan, United States
SH

Stanley Harpole

iDiv
Leipzig, Germany
JK

Jens Kattge

Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Germany
KK

Kaitlin Kimmel

Universtiy of Colorado
Baltimore, MD, United States
SK

Sally E. Koerner, PhD

Assistant Professor
University of North Carolina Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina, United States
LK

Lotte Korell

iDiv, Germany
AL

Adam Langley, PhD

Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania, United States
AC

Adam T. Clark, https://www.adamclarktheecologist.com/

Assistant Professor
University of Graz
Graz, Steiermark, Austria
TM

Tamara Munkemuller

UMR-CNRS, France
TO

Timothy J. Ohlert

University of New Mexico
RO

Renske Onstein

iDiv, Germany
JP

Josep Padulles Cubino

Masaryk University, Czech Republic
CR

Christiane Roscher

iDiv, Germany
FS

Franziska Schrodt

University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Kevin Wilcox, PhD

Program in Ecology, University of Wyoming, United States

Background/Question/Methods

Ecologists are tasked with forecasting community responses to global change drivers (GCDs), and community assembly theory can inform our understanding of these responses. Commonly invoked niche-based mechanisms driving community assembly such as environmental filtering (local environmental conditions selects for species with similar traits) and limiting similarity (biotic processes limits overlap of species with similar traits, as well as their feedbacks can inform our ability to predict community responses to GCDs. A combination of approaches has been proposed to better generalize and increase predictability of how communities respond to GCDs by examining both (1) community-level functional trait expression and (2) phylogenetic diversity within communities. We are examining how changes in plant species composition with global change shift phylogenetic and functional diversity within a database of more than 145 global change experiments from around the world utilizing a causal modeling approach.

Results/Conclusions

Results indicate opposing shifts in phylogenetic vs functional diversity for each global change driver. For example, with nitrogen addition treatments, phylogenetic diversity increases while functional trait diversity decreases. In contrast, with water addition phylogenetic diversity declines while functional trait diversity increases. These opposing shifts indicate that (1) communities are converging on a trait space under some global change treatments but not others, and (2) that these traits are not conserved across the phylogeny. Together, our results indicate that community-level functional trait expression and phylogenetic diversity are both being affected by GCDs in different ways, and together can be used to inform how communities assemble.