LTER: Selection across scales—merging evolutionary biology and community ecology to understand trait shifts in response toenvironmental change
Project Description
Selection acts on traits at both the community level, determining community assembly, and at the population level, determining the outcome of evolution. Selection at both scales combines with phenotypic plasticity to cause shifts in community-level mean trait values (average species trait values weighted by their relative abundance) in response to environmental change. If selection is typically concordant and populations and communities respond in the same direction, then responses to selection within species will amplify shifts in community mean trait values. In contrast, if selection at population and community scales are not correlated or occur in opposite directions, shifts in community mean trait values will be lower than expected based on shifts in species abundances. Plasticity will influence community-level trait values in similar ways: when plastic shifts parallel/oppose selection, community mean trait value changes will be amplified/reduced. Here, we propose to combine the expansive community composition data from LTER experiments with approaches, ideas, and datasets from evolutionary biology to investigate whether plasticity, selection at the population scale, and selection at the community scale are concordant or discordant. Our framework and findings will help predict long-term shifts in the community-level mean trait values that determine ecosystem functions.

Principal Investigator(s)
Project Dates
Start: January 1, 2023
End: December 31, 2023
active
Participants
- Cynthia Chang
- University of Washington, Bothell
- Elsa E. Cleland
- University of California, San Diego
- Nancy Emery
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- Jonathan Henn
- University of Colorado, Boulder
- Loralee Larios
- University of California, Riverside
- Jennifer Lau
- Indiana University
- Alejandra Martinez Blancas
- Michigan State University
- Neha Mohanbabu
- University of Minnesota
- Tom Mozdzer
- Bryn Mawr College
- Tadeo Ramirez Parada
- University of California Santa Barbara
- Ingrid Slette
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Joseph Waterton
- Indiana University
- Ken Whitney
- University of New Mexico