Consequences of plant function for species distributions, fitness, and community assembly across latitudinal and altitudinal gradients

Abstract

Understanding which adaptations are beneficial in different climates is a question that has intrigued plant ecologists for centuries. Alexander von Humboldt is one of the first to document how plant communities change with elevation in the Ecuadorian Andes in 1824 (Humboldt, 1805). Such altitudinal or latitudinal gradients are still useful to ecologists today to address a broad swatch of ecological and evolutionary questions, including how environmental conditions shape community assembly and interspecific diversity, by learning how species function in different environments. Understanding how plants function in different environments allows us to predict the distribution and range of a species and identify the filters that lead to plant communities. With climate change ongoing, understanding of the abiotic processes that shape ecological communities and species ranges is especially critical. As the Earth’s climate warms, cooler climates are expected to shift to higher latitudes and elevations. There is evidence that species ranges are already shifting, for example much of the new growth of North American trees is further north than older members of the species, indicating a shift northward in the populations (Woodall et al., 2009). My overall research goal is to understand how plant function varies across environmental gradients and how that affects species distributions and community assembly. To this end, I have conducted field-based research on plants across latitudinal and altitudinal gradients.