Life Sciences Commons^™

Past Management Spurs Differential Plant Communities Within A Giant Single-Clone Aspen Forest, Paul C. Rogers, Jan ŠEbesta

Ecology Center Publications

Sustainable aspen ecosystems hold great promise for global biodiversity conservation. These forests harbor relatively high species diversity, yet are threatened by fire suppression, land development, timber-focused management, extended droughts, and chronic herbivory. “Pando” is a high-profile quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) forest in Utah, USA which is putatively the ‘largest living organism on earth.’ Pando comprises an estimated 47,000 genetically identical stems, but is threatened by human impacts. Our interest in the present study is whether changes to the giant organism were affecting understorey vegetation and whether discrete zones are displaying divergent community compositions. For instance, recent research has demonstrated strong …

A Global View Of Aspen: Conservation Science For Widespread Keystone Systems, Paul C. Rogers, Bradley D. Pinno, Jan Šebesta, Benedicte R. Albrectsen, Guoqing Li, Natalya Ivanova, Dominik Kulakowski, Antonín Kusbach, Timo Kuuluvainen, Simon M. Landhäusser, Hongyan Liu, Tor Myking, Pertti Pulkkinen, Zhongming Wen

Ecology Center Publications

Across the northern hemisphere, six species of aspen (Populus spp.) play a disproportionately important role in promoting biodiversity, sequestering carbon, limiting forest disturbances, and providing other ecosystem services. In many regions, aspen can maintain canopy dominance for decades to centuries as the sole major broadleaf trees in forested landscapes otherwise dominated by conifers. Aspen ecosystems are valued for many reasons, but here we highlight their potential as key contributors to regional and global biodiversity. We begin with an overview of the aspens’ ecological and economic roles. We then present a systematic literature analysis to assess topics of aspen …

Geospatial Modeling Of Land Cover Change In The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion Of South America; One Of Most Biodiverse And Rainy Areas In The World, José Camilo Fagua, R. Douglas Ramsey

Ecology Center Publications

The tropical rain forests of northwest South America fall within the Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE). The CGE is one of 25 global biodiversity hotspots prioritized for conservation due to its high biodiversity and endemism as well as threats due to deforestation. The analysis of land-use and land-cover (LULC) change within the CGE using remotely sensed imagery is challenging because this area is considered to be one of the rainiest places on the planet (hence high frequency of cloud cover). Furthermore, the availability of high-resolution remotely sensed data is low for developing countries before 2015. Using the Random Forest ensemble learning …

Weighting Effective Number Of Species Measures By Abundance Weakens Detection Of Diversity Responses, Yong Cao, Charles P. Hawkins

Ecology Center Publications

1. The effective number of species (ENS) has been proposed as a robust measure of species diversity that overcomes several limitations in terms of both diversity indices and species richness (SR). However, it is not yet clear if ENS improves interpretation and comparison of biodiversity monitoring data, and ultimately resource management decisions.

2. We used simulations of five stream macroinvertebrate assemblages and spatially extensive field data of stream fishes and mussels to show (a) how different ENS formulations respond to stress and (b) how diversity–environment relationships change with values of q, which weight ENS measures by species abundances.

3. Values …

Competition And Coexistence In Plant Communities: Intraspecific Competition Is Stronger Than Interspecific Competition, Peter B. Adler, Danielle Smull, Karen H. Beard, Ryan T. Choi, Tucker J. Furniss, Andrew Kulmatiski, Joan M. Meiners, Andrew T. Tredennick, Kari E. Veblen

Ecology Center Publications

Theory predicts that intraspecific competition should be stronger than interspecific competition for any pair of stably coexisting species, yet previous literature reviews found little support for this pattern. We screened over 5400 publications and identified 39 studies that quantified phenomenological intraspecific and interspecific interactions in terrestrial plant communities. Of the 67% of species pairs in which both intra‐ and interspecific effects were negative (competitive), intraspecific competition was, on average, four to five‐fold stronger than interspecific competition. Of the remaining pairs, 93% featured intraspecific competition and interspecific facilitation, a situation that stabilises coexistence. The difference between intra‐ and interspecific effects tended …