{"id":5907,"date":"2022-04-18T21:18:47","date_gmt":"2022-04-19T01:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/?p=5907"},"modified":"2022-04-18T21:33:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T01:33:37","slug":"c08-predicting-plant-abundance-in-a-restored-prairie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/c08-predicting-plant-abundance-in-a-restored-prairie\/","title":{"rendered":"C08: Predicting Plant Abundance in a Restored Prairie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In restoration ecology it is important to understand the processes that promote abundance in plant communities. Two of these processes are plant functional traits and plant-soil feedback. Plant traits have been proven useful in predicting abundance across many ecosystems due to their reflection of varying resource allocation in different environments. Plant-soil feedback estimates emerge through the influence of plants and soil microorganisms on one another\u2019s fitness. Because these estimates are produced through the interaction between the plants and the site-specific microbial community, plant-soil feedback may be able to capture site-specific information influencing abundance that plant traits cannot. We hypothesized that plant-soil feedback and plant traits can be used to predict abundance. We conducted a two phase greenhouse experiment to calculate average feedback across 19 plant species from a restored prairie at the Ecological Research Center. Additionally, several plant traits were collected that are reflective of the plant economic spectrum. We found plant-soil feedback to be negative on average which is predicted to promote coexistence of plant species; however, plant-soil feedback is a weak predictor of abundance. This finding contradicts previous studies that did find plant-soil feedback to have strong predictive abilities and emphasizes the need for experimentation to identify the conditions under which plant-soil feedback is able to predict abundance. In contrast, three plant traits were identified as good predictors of abundance. At our site, abundant plant species had resource-conservative traits suggesting that interspecific competition driven by resource use is the dominant predictor of abundance over intraspecific competition driven by plant-soil feedback. My research experience as an undergraduate summer scholar working with Dr. Jonathan Bauer has provided me with the research experience necessary to successfully get into graduate school. I will be attending Texas Tech University in Fall 2022 pursuing a MS in biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Alex Bowers, Botany and Environmental Earth Science<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advisor: Jonathan Bauer, Biology<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduate Advisor: Karly Cazzato, Biology<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In restoration ecology it is important to understand the processes that promote abundance in plant communities. Two of these processes are plant functional traits and plant-soil feedback. Plant traits have been proven useful in predicting abundance across many ecosystems due to their reflection of varying resource allocation in different environments. Plant-soil feedback estimates emerge through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[924,1,24,940],"tags":[1049,1050,89],"class_list":["post-5907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2022-talks","category-projects","category-biology","category-c01-11","tag-botany-environmental-earth-science","tag-plant-ecology","tag-stem"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbRpLx-1xh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/301"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/undergraduate-research-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}