Abstract Detail

Ecology

Karimi, Nisa [1], Hipp, Andrew [2], Glasenhardt, Mary-Claire [3], Williams, Evelyn [4], Barak, Rebecca [5], Ernst, Adrienne [6].

Effects of phylogenetic and trait diversity in a restoration ecology experiment.

Organisms’ evolutionary history and relatedness are increasingly being considered in community ecology. Incorporating phylogeny into conservation and natural resource planning may enable us to utilize natural history traits that have evolved in predictable ways on the phylogeny to make more efficient and effective management decisions. This is increasingly applicable as the goal of restoration continues to shift from replicating historic community assemblages to using them as a guide to develop diverse communities that maximize ecosystem services. Achieving restoration outcomes is challenging, and incorporating fuller understanding across multiple dimensions of biodiversity may complement practitioner knowledge of how to develop species assemblages likely to have high establishment and to deliver key functions. We aim to build upon this knowledge by incorporating evolutionary history and trait heritability to investigate restoration outcomes. Is phylogenetic structure a good predictor of the functional trait space occupied by restored plant assemblages? How does a species’ individual identity relate to its success? Do functional traits predict how species will perform in a restoration setting? We use a tallgrass-prairie restoration experiment with 127 species organized into thirty-six 15-species assemblages to address these questions. Our first year of data suggested that there was a strong but unexpected effect of phylogeny: higher phylogenetic diversity plots exhibited lower species diversity in the second year, counter to our expectation that more phylogenetically diverse assemblages would maintain greater species diversity through niche complementarity. In this talk, we present a second year of data and an analysis of how traits and evolutionary history—both diversity of plots and the particular lineages represented within them—shaped outcomes.

1 - The Morton Arboretum, 4100 Illinois Route 53 , Lisle, IL, 60532-1293, USA
2 - The Morton Arboretum, 4100 Illinois Route 53, Lisle, IL, 60532, United States
3 - The Morton Arboretum, 4100 Illinois Route 53, Lisle, IL, 60532-1293, United States
4 - 1209 N. Pepper Tree Drive, Palatine, IL, 60067, United States
5 - Plant Biology And Conservation, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, IL, 60022, United States
6 - Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, IL, 60022

Keywords:
Restoration 
phylogeney
Species Richness
phylogenetic diversity
tallgrass prairies
functional diversity.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: ECO3, Ecology 3: Vegetation, Community and Restoration Ecology
Location: Tucson A/Starr Pass
Date: Tuesday, July 30th, 2019
Time: 4:00 PM
Number: ECO3010
Abstract ID:938
Candidate for Awards:None