Organized Oral Session
Hybrid Session
Benjamin Baiser
Associate Professor
Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, United States
Angela Strecker
Associate Professor
Institute for Watershed Studies, Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington, United States
Phoebe Zarnetske
Associate Professor
Department of Integrative Biology
Department of Integrative Biology; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program; Institute for Biodiversity, Ecology, Evolution, and Macrosystems, Michigan State University, United States
Sydne Record
Associate Professor
Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology, University of Maine, Maine, United States
Organismal traits are a central focus of contemporary community ecology. Traits are commonly used to: predict species’ responses to climatic change and habitat loss; assess how assemblages and food webs will reorganize following colonization or emigration of new species (e.g., invasion); and to unravel large-scale patterns in species distributions across geographic gradients. Recently, intraspecific trait variation (ITV) has made a resurgence in the field of community ecology advancing theories of community assembly, food web ecology, and macroecology. Although limited, previous work using ITV has demonstrated great promise for studying ecological communities across spatial scales. ITV provides a currency for assessing the roles of abiotic and biotic processes, as it reflects the mechanisms driving species occurrence and responses to environmental change. Based on current ecological theory, at broader spatial scales, ITV should be constrained relative to the total possible variation for a given trait due to filtering by abiotic factors (e.g., temperature, precipitation). At local scales, ITV should be low such that niches do not overlap between species (i.e., niche partitioning) based on the theory of limiting similarity and the niche variation hypothesis. The relationships between regional- and local-scale drivers of community assembly and ITV and knowledge that ITV underpins coexistence create a mechanistic framework linking abiotic and biotic drivers to biodiversity (e.g., species richness). In this session we will explore the link between ITV and ecological communities from local to regional scales.
Presenting Author: Casey Youngflesh – Michigan State University
Co-author: Phoebe L. Zarnetske – Department of Integrative Biology; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program; Institute for Biodiversity, Ecology, Evolution, and Macrosystems, Michigan State University
Co-author: Kyla M. Dahlin – Michigan State University
Presenting Author: Isadora E. Fluck – University of Florida
Co-author: Sydne Record – Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology, University of Maine
Co-author: Benjamin Baiser – Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida
Presenting Author: Andrea Westerband – Western Sydney University
Presenting Author: Mansi Mungee – School of Biology, University of Leeds
Presenting Author: Olivia Cope – Whitworth University
Presenting Author: Andrew Siefert – University of Wyoming
Co-author: Alex Fajardo – Universidad de Talca
Co-author: Daniel C. Laughlin – University of Wyoming