HR: 16:30h
AN: NB14F-05 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: The Interaction Between Plant Life History Traits and the Riverine Landscape: a Stochastic Simulation Approach
AU: * Hatfield, C
EM: chatfld@crssa.rutgers.edu
AF: Ecology & Evolution, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 United States
AU: Shao, N
EM: nanshao@eden.rutgers.edu
AF: Ecology & Evolution, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 United States
AB: At the level of the watershed, the riverine habitat represents a spatially distributed yet interconnected landscape element. The spatial organization of the riverine landscape determines the distribution and extent of habitats and the interconnectivity influences how species access riverine habitat elements. A central question is what and how characteristics of a species affect its performance in the context of a river network. We used a spatially explicit, stochastic simulation modeling approach to explore how interconnectivity and complexity of the stream network potentially interacts with life history traits in determining riparian plant species persistence and abundance. We varied life history traits and stream network complexity in a factorial design. For each factorial combination, a new species was introduced to an established riparian community. We evaluated the new species and the community responses using various metrics including rate of spread and abundance. Interaction strengths varied between different life history traits depending on network complexity, but persistence and success of a new species was determined by the combination species life history traits not a single or combination of a few traits. This work underscores the need to better understand life histories using multiple pathways of investigation including models, field and experimental approaches.
DE: 1848 Networks
DE: 1851 Plant ecology
SC: North American Benthological Society [NB]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly