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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Impacts Of Anthropogenic Change On Plant Reproduction And Fitness, Alexandra S. Faidiga
Impacts Of Anthropogenic Change On Plant Reproduction And Fitness, Alexandra S. Faidiga
Masters Theses
Humans are altering natural systems around the globe in myriad ways. For plant species, such anthropogenic changes have resulted in increasingly fragmented populations, desynchronized interactions with mutualists, and shifted geographic ranges, among other effects. However, despite numerous examples of human impacts on plant populations, the consequences of these changes on plant reproduction remain poorly understood. In my thesis, I investigate the impacts of two forms of anthropogenic change–habitat disturbance and climate warming–on plant reproduction and fitness. I take two distinct approaches to address questions posed at local and regional scales. In Chapter I, I ask how inbreeding depression varies across …
Biotic And Abiotic Drivers Of Plant Symbionts Determine Plant Performance, The Maintenance Of Diversity, And Response To Global Change, Jeremiah A. Henning
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 …
Plasticity And Biotic Interactions Mediate Plant Persistence In A Changing World, Alix Ann Pfennigwerth
Plasticity And Biotic Interactions Mediate Plant Persistence In A Changing World, Alix Ann Pfennigwerth
Masters Theses
Anthropogenic global change is occurring today at a faster rate and larger scale than ever before. Understanding how plants will respond to such large-scale disturbance is critical for biodiversity conservation, yet the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying these responses remain poorly understood. In this thesis, I investigated the mechanisms underlying plant response to two major drivers of global change, climate change and the widespread mortality of foundation species. First, I examined genetic and plastic plant trait responses to climatic variation using elevation gradients, which serve as space-for-time substitutions for climate change. Through field observations in three populations of the North …
Individual Variation In Plant Traits Drives Species Interactions, Ecosystem Functioning, And Responses To Global Change, Quentin Daniel Read
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
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 …