Daniel Laughlin results 37
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Fix—do not ditch—the fundamental nicheNARA Subscribed
Trait space and compactness: A new perspective on explaining variations in primary productivityNARA Subscribed
A fundamental question in ecology is why plant communities have large trait space yet strong coordination among those traits across large scales, despite these patterns seeming contradictory. Answering this question requires quantitatively linking the geographic distribution of trait space and coordination with gross primary productivity (GPP). We leveraged an unprecedented large‐scale dataset of nine leaf traits for 5718 spec...
Belowground persistence types relevant to severe disturbanceNARA Subscribed
Aim Beta diversity quantifies the similarity of ecological assemblages. Its increase, known as biotic homogenisation, can be a consequence of biological invasions. However, species occurrence (presence/absence) and abundance‐based analyses can produce contradictory assessments of the magnitude and direction of changes in beta diversity. Previous work indicates these contradictions should be less frequent in nature than in theo...
The Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center (MMPC) Live Program was established in 2023 by the National Institute for Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance biomedical research by providing the scientific community with standardized, high quality phenotyping services for mouse models of diabetes and obesity. Emerging as the next iteration of the MMPC Program which serve...
A major goal in ecology is to make generalizable predictions of organism responses to environmental variation based on their traits. However, straightforward relationships between traits and fitness are rare and likely to vary with environmental context. Characterizing how traits mediate demographic responses to the environment may enhance the predictions of organism responses to global change. We synthesized 15 years of demog...
Predictions of biodiversity are improved by integrating trait‐based competition with abiotic filteringNARA Subscribed
All organisms must simultaneously tolerate the environment and access limiting resources if they are to persist. Approaches to understanding abiotic filtering and competitive interactions have generally been developed independently. Consequently, integrating those factors to predict species abundances and community structure remains an unresolved challenge. We introduce a new synthetic framework that models both abiotic filter...
Cover and density of southwestern ponderosa pine understory plants in permanent chart quadrats (2002–2020)NARA Subscribed
This data set consists of 101 permanent 1 m × 1 m (1‐m 2 ) quadrats located within southwestern ponderosa pine ecosystems near Flagstaff, Arizona, USA. Individual plants in these quadrats were identified and mapped annually for 19 years (2002–2020). The original chart quadrats were established between 1912 and 1927 to determine the effects of domestic livestock grazing on herbaceous plants and pine seedlings. Today these data...
Environmental filters of freshwater fish community assembly along elevation and latitudinal gradientsNARA Subscribed
Aim The aim was to identify drivers of historical freshwater fish community assembly by testing for interactions between functional traits and two climatic gradients, namely elevation and latitude. Many studies conclude that environmental filtering is the dominant process of community‐wide trait convergence at high elevations and high latitudes, but a full understanding of which specific filters cause trait convergence is lack...
Global root traits (GRooT) databaseNARA Subscribed
Motivation Trait data are fundamental to the quantitative description of plant form and function. Although root traits capture key dimensions related to plant responses to changing environmental conditions and effects on ecosystem processes, they have rarely been included in large‐scale comparative studies and global models. For instance, root traits remain absent from nearly all studies that define the global spectrum of plan...
Aim Predictions of plant traits over space and time are increasingly used to improve our understanding of plant community responses to global environmental change. A necessary step forward is to assess the reliability of global trait predictions. In this study, we predict community mean plant traits at the global scale and present a systematic evaluation of their reliability in terms of the accuracy of the models, ecological r...
The functional trait values that constitute a whole‐plant phenotype interact with the environment to determine demographic rates. Current approaches often fail to explicitly consider trait × trait and trait × environment interactions, which may lead to missed information that is valuable for understanding and predicting the drivers of demographic rates and functional diversity. Here, we consider these interactions by modeling...
TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open accessNARA Subscribed
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodivers...
This study examined long‐term stability in water quality of Lake Okataina, North Island, New Zealand, inferred from sediments deposited from 1836 to 2009, during which time there was a pyroclastic volcanic eruption (Tarawera 1886) and successive introductions of invasive mammals. Multiple geochemical proxies were analysed stratigraphically for organic matter loading, primary productivity, redox potential and phosphorus retenti...
Aim Plant trait databases often contain traits that are correlated, but for whom direct (undirected statistical dependency) and indirect (mediated by other traits) connections may be confounded. The confounding of correlation and connection hinders our understanding of plant strategies, and how these vary among growth forms and climate zones. We identified the direct and indirect connections across plant traits relevant to com...
Correlations between community‐weighted mean ( CWM ) traits and environmental gradients are often assumed to quantify the adaptive value of traits. We tested this assumption by comparing these correlations with models of survival probability using 46 perennial species from long‐term permanent plots in pine forests of Arizona. Survival was modelled as a function of trait × environment interactions, plant size, climatic variatio...
Constraints on trait combinations explain climatic drivers of biodiversity: the importance of trait covariance in community assemblyNARA Subscribed
Trade‐offs maintain diversity and structure communities along environmental gradients. Theory indicates that if covariance among functional traits sets a limit on the number of viable trait combinations in a given environment, then communities with strong multidimensional trait constraints should exhibit low species diversity. We tested this prediction in winter annual plant assemblages along an aridity gradient using multilev...
Tree mortality across biomes is promoted by drought intensity, lower wood density and higher specific leaf areaNARA Subscribed
Drought events are increasing globally, and reports of consequent forest mortality are widespread. However, due to a lack of a quantitative global synthesis, it is still not clear whether drought‐induced mortality rates differ among global biomes and whether functional traits influence the risk of drought‐induced mortality. To address these uncertainties, we performed a global meta‐analysis of 58 studies of drought‐induced for...