Treesearch

1. Despite theoretical advances, the ecological factors and functional traits that enable species varying in seed size and fecundity to coexist remain unclear. Given inherent fecundity advantages, why don't small-seeded species dominate communities?2. In perennial grasslands, we evaluated whether small-seeded species are less tolerant of competition from the community dominant bunchgrass than large-seeded species, but also less vulnerable to seed predation by mice. We also explored whether trade-offs involving competitive tolerance include two other functional traits, height and leaf mass...

Common woolly sunflower occurs from British Columbia south to California, east to Nevada, northwestern Utah, and western Wyoming and Montana (Johnson and Mooring 2006). Variety integrifolium is the most widely distributed of the common woolly sunflower varieties (Table 1). Varieties obovatum and hallii are uncommon (Mooring 2001). Variety hallii is known from only two populations in Kern and Santa Barbara counties, California (Tibor 2001 cited in Johnson and Mooring [2006]).

Biodiversity collections are experiencing a renaissance fueled by the intersection of informatics, emerging technologies, and the extended use and interpretation of specimens and archived databases. In this article, we explore the potential for transformative research in ecology integrating biodiversity collections, stable isotope analysis (SIA), and environmental informatics. Like genomic DNA, SIA provides a common currency interpreted in the context of biogeochemical principles. Integration of SIA data across collections allows for evaluation of long-term ecological change at local to...

Shared stewardship for the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS), or the creation of partnerships, is integral to the completion of basic and fundamental stewardship tasks within wilderness (e.g., trail work, Leave No Trace education, monitoring). However, successful wilderness shared stewardship is impeded by a variety of barriers, which are institutional (e.g., employee turnover), practical (e.g., lack of staff, limited informational resources about how to set up partnerships), and conceptual (e.g., ambiguity surrounding what wilderness shared stewardship is). There has been...

Visitor use in wilderness has grown over the past several decades, along with research focused on visitor use management (VUM) in congressionally designated wilderness. This scoping review of research published between 2000 and 2020 explores the distribution and representativeness of wilderness VUM research within the context of (a) the federal land management agencies administering wilderness and (b) the geographic distribution of research. Findings indicate wilderness administered by the Bureau of Land Management and US Fish and Wildlife Service were disproportionately understudied...

Fine-scale topography and canopy cover can play an important role in mediating effects of regional-scale climate change on the below-canopy environment in mountain forests. The aim of this study was to determine how below-canopy temperatures in a high-elevation Rocky Mountain forest have been affected by canopy change resulting from severe wildfire and spruce beetle outbreak within the last 10-15 years.

The coordination of traits from individual organs to whole plants is under strong selection because of environmental constraints on resource acquisition and use. However, the tight coordination of traits may provide underlying mechanisms of how locally adapted plant populations can become maladapted because of climate change.

Accurate knowledge of the historical characteristics of forest ecosystems is important because it provides baseline information for research and management, and a reference point for guiding restoration treatments. Wisconsin forests have undergone drastic changes in structure after Euro-American settlement due to logging, selective cutting, and fire exclusion. Currently, no literature quantifies and maps forest density and other structural metrics at scales for restoration of historical forest ecosystems. Therefore, Hanberry and Dey (2019) used historical surveys to reconstruct historical...

Climate change presents distinct ecological and physiological challenges to plants as extreme climate events become more common. Understanding how species have adapted to drought, especially ecologically important nonmodel organisms, will be crucial to elucidate potential biological pathways for drought adaptation and inform conservation strategies. To aid in genome-to- phenome research, a draft genome was assembled for a diploid individual of Artemisia tridentata subsp. tridentata, a threatened keystone shrub in western North America. While this taxon has few genetic resources available...

Bark beetles and their associated fungi kill trees readily, but we often ignore which organism is the leading cause of tree mortality. While phloem feeding beetles inhibit photosynthate transport, their associated fungi block the tracheids disrupting transpiration. Within the family Pinaceae, knowledge of tree physiological decline following bark beetle and associated fungi colonization is limited to the genus Pinus. Here we investigate the physiological response of Pseudotsuga (P. menziesii) to bark beetles or its fungi. We hypothesized that fungi block water transport in Douglas-fir...