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213 results for “Environmental gradients”
Data and code for: Plastic and quantitative genetic divergence mirror environmental gradients among wild, fragmented populations of Impatiens capensis
<p><strong>Premise of the study:</strong> Habitat fragmentation generates molecular genetic divergence among isolated populations but few studies have assessed phenotypic divergence and fitness in populations where the genetic consequences of habitat fragmentation are known. Phenotypic divergence could reflect plasticity, local adaptation, and/or genetic drift.</p> <p><strong>Methods:</strong> We examined patterns and potential drivers of phenotypic divergence among 12 populations of jewelweed (<em>Impatiens capensis </em>Meerb.) that show strong molecular genetic signals of isolation and drift among fragmented habitats. We measured morphological and reproductive traits in both maternal plants within natural populations and their self-fertilized progeny grown together in a common garden. We also quantified environmental divergence between home sites and the common garden.</p> <p><strong>Key results: </strong>Populations with less molecular genetic variation expressed less maternal phenotypic variation. Progeny in the common garden converged in phenotypes relative to their wild mothers but retained among-population differences in morphology, survival, and reproduction. Among-population phenotypic variance was 3-10x greater in home sites than in the common garden for 6 of 7 morphological traits measured. Patterns of phenotypic divergence paralleled environmental gradients in ways suggestive of adaptation. Progeny resembled their mothers less as the environmental distance between their home site and the common garden increased.</p> <p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Despite strong molecular signatures of isolation and drift, phenotypic differences among these <em>Impatiens </em>populations appear to reflect both adaptive quantitative genetic divergence and plasticity. Quantifying the extent of local adaptation and plasticity and how these covary with molecular and phenotypic variation help us predict when populations may lose their adaptive capacity. </p>
Data from: Geographical variation of Artemisia leaf morphology along a large environmental gradient in China
<p>We collected 60 species of <em>Artemisia</em> from 81 sampling sites in 15 provinces in China from the end of July to August 2018. At each site, we recorded latitude and longitude. Then we identified all<em> Artemisia</em> species and randomly sampled 4 plants for each species. A total of 1,041 plants were sampled. In the laboratory, 10 leaves in the middle of each plant were selected and detached. Because light might have effect on leaf morphology, we only used sun exposed leaves. The leaves were soaked in distilled water for 24 h to fully restore their shapes. After blotted-dried, leaves were place as petiole to the left and tip to the right, and an Epson V370 (Seiko Epson Corp., Nagano, Japan) was used to scan the leaves at a resolution of 600 DPI. </p> <p>We set 40 landmarks along the blade edge on each leaf. The first point was set at the petiole and the 21st point at the tip, and these two points were defined as landmarks. The remaining points were evenly distributed at the blade edge and defined as semilandmarks. Landmarks were saved in tps format using Geomorph package.</p>
Facilitation strength across environmental and beneficiary trait gradients in stream communities
<p>Ecosystem engineers modify habitats in ways that facilitate other community members by ameliorating harsh conditions. The strength of such facilitation is predicted to be influenced by both beneficiary traits and abiotic context. One key trait of animals that could control the strength of facilitation is beneficiary body size because it should determine how beneficiaries fit within and exploit stress ameliorating habitat modifications. However, few studies have measured how beneficiary body size relates to facilitation strength along environmental gradients. We examined how the strength of facilitation by net-spinning caddisflies on invertebrate communities in streams varied along an elevation gradient and based on traits of the invertebrate beneficiaries. We measured whether use of silk retreats as habitat concentrated invertebrate density and biomass compared to surrounding rock-surface habitat and whether the use of retreat habitat varied across body sizes of community members along the gradient. We found that retreats substantially concentrated the densities of a diversity of taxa including eight different Orders, and this effect was greatest at high elevations. Caddisfly retreats also concentrated invertebrate biomass more as elevation increased. Body size of invertebrates inhabiting retreats was lower than that of surrounding rock habitats at low elevation sites, however body size between retreats and rocks converged at higher elevation sites. Additionally, the body size of invertebrates found in retreats varied within and across taxa. Specifically, caddisfly retreats functioned as a potential nursery for taxa with large maximal body sizes. However, the patterns of this taxa-specific nursery effect were not influenced by elevation unlike the patterns observed based on community level body size.Collectively, our results indicate that invertebrates use retreats in earlier life stages or when they are smaller in body size independent of life stage. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that facilitation strength intensifies as elevation increases within stream invertebrate communities. Further consideration of how trait variation and environmental gradients interact to determine the strength and direction of biotic interactions will be important as species ranges and environmental conditions continue to shift. </p>
Data from: An environmental habitat gradient and within-habitat segregation enable co-existence of ecologically similar bird species
<p>Niche theory predicts that ecologically similar species can co-exist through multidimensional niche partitioning. However, due to the challenges of accounting for both abiotic and biotic processes in ecological niche modelling, the underlying mechanisms that facilitate co-existence of competing species are poorly understood. In this study, we evaluated potential mechanisms underlying the co-existence of ecologically similar bird species in a biodiversity-rich transboundary montane forest in east-central Africa by computing niche overlap indices along an environmental elevation gradient, diet, forest strata, activity patterns, and within-habitat segregation across horizontal space. We found strong support for abiotic environmental habitat niche partitioning, with 55% of species pairs having separate elevation niches. For the remaining species pairs that exhibited similar elevation niches, we found that within-habitat segregation across horizontal space and to a lesser extent vertical forest strata provided the most likely mechanisms of species co-existence. Co-existence of ecologically similar species within a highly diverse montane forest was determined primarily by abiotic factors (e.g., environmental elevation gradient) that characterize the Grinnellian niche and secondarily by biotic factors (e.g., vertical and horizontal segregation within habitats) that describe the Eltonian niche. Thus, partitioning across multiple levels of spatial organization is a key mechanism of co-existence in diverse communities.</p>
Data from: Inferring ecological selection from multidimensional community trait distributions along environmental gradients
<p>Understanding the drivers of community assembly is critical for predicting the future of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecological selection ubiquitously shapes communities by selecting for individuals with most suitable trait combinations. Detecting selection types on key traits across environmental gradients and over time has the potential to reveal underlying abiotic and biotic drivers of community dynamics. Here we present a model-based predictive framework to quantify multidimensional trait distributions of communities (community trait niches), which we use to identify ecological selection types shaping communities along environmental gradients. We apply the framework to over 3600 boreal forest understory plant communities with results indicating that directional, stabilizing, and divergent selection all modify community trait niches and that the selection type acting on individual traits may change over time. Our results provide novel and rare empirical evidence for divergent selection within a natural system. Our approach provides a framework for identifying key traits under selection and facilitates the detection of processes underlying community dynamics.</p>
Data from: Inferring ecological selection from multidimensional community trait distributions along environmental gradients
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Data and code for: Plastic and quantitative genetic divergence mirror environmental gradients among wild, fragmented populations of Impatiens capensis
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Facilitation strength across environmental and beneficiary trait gradients in stream communities
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The impact of species phylogenetic relatedness on invasion varies distinctly along resource versus nonresource environmental gradients
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Predicting the breeding distribution of wader species across climatic and environmental gradients
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Data from: An environmental habitat gradient and within-habitat segregation enable co-existence of ecologically similar bird species
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Data from: Environmental gradients shape genetic variation in the desert moss, Syntrichia caninervis Mitt. (Pottiaceae)
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Data from: Environmental variation associated with topography explains butterfly diversity along a tropical elevation gradient
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Data for Context-dependent biotic interactions control plant abundance across altitudinal environmental gradients, 2014, 2016, Colorado, USA
Many biotic interactions influence community structure, yet most distribution models for plants have focused on plant competition or used only abiotic variables to predict plant abundance. Furthermore, biotic interactions are commonly context-dependent across abiotic gradients. For example, plant-plant interactions can grade from competition to facilitation over temperature gradients. We used a hierarchical Bayesian framework to predict the abundances of 12 plant species across a mountain landscape and test hypotheses on the context-dependency of biotic interactions over abiotic gradients. We combined field-based estimates of six biotic interactions (foliar herbivory and pathogen damage, fungal root colonization, fossorial mammal disturbance, plant cover, and plant diversity) with abiotic data on climate and soil depth, nutrients, and moisture. All biotic interactions were significantly context-dependent along temperature gradients. Results supported the stress gradient hypothesis: As abiotic stress increased, the strength or direction of the relationship between biotic variables and plant abundance generally switched from negative (suggesting suppressed plant abundance) to positive (suggesting facilitation/mutualism). For half of the species, plant cover was the best predictor of abundance, suggesting that the prior focus on plant-plant interactions is well-justified. Explicitly incorporating the context-dependency of biotic interactions generated novel hypotheses about drivers of plant abundance across abiotic gradients and may improve the accuracy of niche models.
Population genomic analyses of the sea urchin Echinometra sp. EZ across an extreme environmental gradient
<p>Extreme environmental gradients represent excellent study systems to better understand the variables that mediate patterns of genomic variation between populations. They also allow for more accurate predictions of how future environmental change might affect marine species. The Persian/Arabian Gulf is extreme in both temperature and salinity, whereas the adjacent Gulf of Oman has conditions more typical of tropical oceans. The sea urchin <em>Echinometra</em> sp. <em>EZ</em> inhabits both of these seas and plays a critical role in coral reef health as a grazer and bioeroder, but, to date, there have been no population genomic studies on this or any urchin species in this unique region. <em>E.</em> sp. <em>EZ'</em>s life history traits (e.g., large population sizes, large reproductive clutches, and long life spans), in theory, should homogenize populations unless nonneutral processes are occurring. Here, we generated a draft genome and a restriction site-associated DNA sequencing data set from seven populations along an environmental gradient across the Persian/Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The estimated genome size of<em> E.</em> sp. <em>EZ</em> was 609 Mb and the heterozygosity was among the highest recorded for an echinoderm at 4.5%. We recovered 918 high-quality SNPs from 85 individuals which we then used in downstream analyses. Population structure analyses revealed a high degree of admixture between all sites, although there was population differentiation and significant pairwise <em>F</em><sub>ST</sub> values between the two seas. Preliminary results suggest migration is bidirec- tional between the seas and nine candidate loci were identified as being under putative natural selection, including one collagen gene. This study is the first to investigate the population genomics of a sea urchin from this extreme environmental gradient and is an important contribution to our understanding of the complex spatial patterns that drive genomic divergence.</p>
Environmental determinants of leaf-litter ant community composition along an elevational gradient
Ant communities are extremely diverse and provide a wide variety of ecological functions in tropical forests. Here we investigated the abiotic factors driving ant composition turnover across an elevational gradient at Mont Itoupé, French Guiana. Mont Itoupé is an isolated mountain whose top is covered by cloud forests, a biogeographical rarity that is likely to be threatened according to climate change scenarios in the region. We examined the influence of six soil, climatic and LiDAR-derived vegetation structure variables on leaf-litter ant assembly (267 species) across nine 0.12-ha plots disposed at three elevations (ca. 400, 600 and 800m asl). We tested (a) whether species co-occurring within a same plot or a same elevation were more similar in terms of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic composition, than species from different plots/elevations, and (b) which environmental variables significantly explained compositional turnover among plots. We found that the distribution of species and traits of ant communities along the elevational gradient was significantly explained by a turnover of environmental conditions, particularly in soil phosphorus and sand content, canopy height and mean annual relative humidity of soil. Our results shed light on the role exerted by environmental filtering in shaping ant community assembly in tropical forests. Identifying the environmental determinants of ant species distribution along tropical elevational gradients could help predicting the future impacts of global warming on biodiversity organization in vulnerable environments such as cloud forests.
Allometry rather than abiotic drivers explains biomass allocation among leaves, stems and roots of Artemisia across a large environmental gradient in China
<p>1. Biomass allocation patterns reflect the adaptive strategies of plants growing in different environments, which is a central issue in comparative plant ecology and evolution. However, the factors underpinning specific allocation patterns across organs and the existence of general rules governing allocation remain contentious. Optimal partitioning theory (OPT) states that plants can respond to resource availability by allocating relatively more biomass to the organ that captures the most limiting resources to optimize growth. In contrast, allometric partitioning theory (APT) postulates that biomass allocation among organs is a power function of plant size independently of environmental variation. As phylogenetic and growth form constraints (e.g. formation of inert heartwood in tree clades) may also affect biomass allocation, comparison among and within closely related taxa of rather similar growth form may enable a more direct testing of which of these two theories prevails.</p> <p>2. To test whether OPT or APT was prevalent at wide geographic scale, we investigated biomass allocation patterns among leaves, stems and roots of 1022 plants of 63 Artemisia species (Asteraceae) collected along broad climate (annual mean temperature range -4.9 to 18.0 °C, annual mean precipitation range 193 to 1668 mm) and soil gradients (soil carbon content range 1.6 to 15.4 kg C m-2) in central and eastern China.</p> <p>3. There were strong allometric relationships among leaf mass (ML), stem mass (MS) and root mass (MR) at both inter- and intraspecific level. Moreover, the interspecific and intraspecific patterns were not different from general patterns for pooled plants, i.e. ML/MR and ML/MS, but not MS/MR, generally decreased with plant size. However, the three organ mass ratios were not responsive to broad climatic or soil gradients after the effect of plant size was removed.</p> <p>4. Synthesis. Our results generally support APT instead of OPT, suggesting that Artemisia plants have evolved an allometric strategy rather than relying on adjustment of allocation among organs to adapt to the broadly varying environments at the regional scale. For follow-up research, we hypothesize that the strong allometric constraints on biomass allocation should depend on strong physiological adaptive responses of the different organs of Artemisia to environmental gradients.</p>
Data from: Population variation, environmental gradients, and the evolutionary ecology of plant defense against herbivory
A central tenet of plant defense theory is that adaptation to the abiotic environment sets the template for defense strategies, imposing a tradeoff between plant growth and defense. Yet, this tradeoff, commonly found among species occupying divergent resource environments, may not occur across populations of single species. We hypothesized that more favorable climates and higher levels of herbivory would lead to increases in growth and defense across plant populations. We evaluated whether plant growth and defense traits co-varied across 18 populations of showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) inhabiting an east-west climate gradient, spanning 25° of longitude. A suite of traits impacting defense (e.g., latex, cardenolides), growth (e.g., size), or both (e.g., SLA, trichomes) were measured in natural populations and in a common garden, allowing us to evaluate plastic and genetically based variation in these traits. In natural populations, herbivore pressure increased towards warmer sites with longer growing seasons. Growth and defense traits showed strong clinal patterns and were positively correlated. In a common garden, clines with climatic origin were only recapitulated for defense traits. Correlations between growth and defense traits were also weaker and more negative in the common garden compared to the natural populations. Thus, our data suggest that climatically favorable sites likely facilitate the evolution of greater defense at minimal costs to growth, likely because of increased resource acquisition.
Data from: Environmental gradients determine the potential for ecosystem engineering effects
Understanding processes that determine biodiversity is a fundamental challenge in ecology. At the landscape scale, physical alteration of ecosystems by organisms, called ecosystem engineering, enhances biodiversity worldwide by increasing heterogeneity in resource conditions and enhancing species coexistence across engineered and non-engineered habitats. Engineering-diversity relationships can vary along environmental gradients due to changes in the amount of physical structuring created by ecosystem engineering, but it is unclear how this variation is influenced by the responsiveness of non-structural abiotic properties to engineering. Here we show that environmental gradients determine the capacity for engineering to alter resource availability and species diversity, independent of the magnitude of structural change produced by engineering. We created an experimental rainfall gradient in an arid grassland where rodents restructure soils by constructing large, long-lasting burrows. We found that greater rainfall increased water availability and productivity in both burrow and inter-burrow habitats, causing a decline in local (alpha) plant diversity within both of these habitats. However, increased rainfall also resulted in greater differences in soil resources between burrow and inter-burrow habitats, which increased species turnover (beta diversity) across habitats and stabilized landscape-level (gamma) diversity. These responses occurred regardless of rodent presence and without changes in the extent of physical alteration of soils by rodents. Our results suggest that environmental gradients can influence the effects of ecosystem engineering in maintaining biodiversity via resource heterogeneity and species turnover. In an era of rapid environmental change, accounting for this interaction may be critical to conservation and management.
Data from: Effects of native bryophytes on exotic grass invasion across an environmental gradient
Understanding the role that native biodiversity plays in controlling exotic species invasion is a critical goal in ecology. In terrestrial plant communities, most research has focused on the effects of native vascular plants on invasion by exotic vascular plants. However, in many ecosystems, native bryophytes and other non-vascular plants are common and can affect the establishment, survival and growth of vascular plants. A more complete picture of how native biodiversity affects exotic plant invasion, demands that more studies measure the effects of native bryophytes on exotic vascular plants. Moreover, there is growing realization that the effects of native species on invaders can range from negative to positive and that a complete picture of interactions between native and exotic plants requires measuring interactions in multiple environments. We used both observational and experimental studies to quantify the effects of native moss on two exotic annual grass species along a 200-m environmental gradient in a coastal dune in northern California. We found the effects of bryophytes to be species-specific and to vary with environmental context. Bryophytes facilitated the survival of one exotic grass species at both ends of the environmental gradient. For the other exotic grass species, bryophytes reduced survival at one end of the environmental gradient and had no effect at the other end. Our findings provide an important test of the effects of native bryophytes on exotic vascular plant invasion, and importantly show that these effects can vary dramatically even across local environmental gradients.
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