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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Doctoral Dissertations

Global change

Publication Year

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Biotic And Abiotic Drivers Of Plant Symbionts Determine Plant Performance, The Maintenance Of Diversity, And Response To Global Change, Jeremiah A. Henning May 2017

Biotic And Abiotic Drivers Of Plant Symbionts Determine Plant Performance, The Maintenance Of Diversity, And Response To Global Change, Jeremiah A. Henning

Doctoral Dissertations

Interactions among organisms regulate the structure and function of ecosystems and the response of ecosystems to global change. The outcome of species interactions is shaped by the partners involved in the interaction and the climate contexts of the systems in which they reside. Global change is altering the distributions of organisms as well as the climate contexts of the systems they reside within, shifting the biotic and abiotic factors shaping species interactions. Thus, predicting the response of ecosystem structure and function to global change remains unresolved. For my dissertation, I explored how the interactions among plants and their mutualistic communities …


Individual Variation In Plant Traits Drives Species Interactions, Ecosystem Functioning, And Responses To Global Change, Quentin Daniel Read May 2016

Individual Variation In Plant Traits Drives Species Interactions, Ecosystem Functioning, And Responses To Global Change, Quentin Daniel Read

Doctoral Dissertations

Ecologists have long sought to understand the processes that lead to the riotous diversity in communities of organisms that inhabit disparate climates and landscapes. Such a diversity of traits leads to a diversity of interactions among species in natural communities, which in turn generates a diversity of potential responses to ongoing global change. In this dissertation, I do three things: I explore the forces that structure plant communities and the ecosystem functions that they mediate, I describe patterns of variation among communities, species, and individual organisms across environmental contexts, and I disentangle the direct effects of global change from the …


On Global Change, Direct And Indirect Interactions, And The Structure Of Ecological Communities: Theoretical And Empirical Tests, Mariano Alberto Rodriguez Cabal Dec 2012

On Global Change, Direct And Indirect Interactions, And The Structure Of Ecological Communities: Theoretical And Empirical Tests, Mariano Alberto Rodriguez Cabal

Doctoral Dissertations

Human induced global change (climate change, CO2 enrichment, nitrogen deposition, habitat degradation and biological invasions) is the most serious threat to biodiversity. Understanding how ecosystems will respond to different components of global change, and how these responses will affect key ecological processes, has become essential in contemporary ecology. For example, several studies have shown that exotic invasive species have negative impacts on the composition of communities, habitat structure and ecosystem processes. Particularly, exotic species may have negative effects on species interactions due to local extinctions, competition and/or replacement of interactions. Despite the large body of research demonstrating the negative …