Our lab aims to understand and predict how ecological communities respond to change - especially climate change and invasive species. We work across scales from microcosm experiments to continental and global-scale spatial analyses. We work with different types of species, communities, and ecosystems. Our spatial analyses tend to focus on birds, small mammals, fish, macroinvertebrates, and trees. Our field and experimental work with climate change and invasions tends to focus on grassland systems and ponds.
We conduct field and experimental research at Kellogg Biological Station (KBS), the KBS Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, and computational research with the MSU Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC).
Below are descriptions of our projects:
Macrosystems Biology & Patterns of Biodiversity
Biotic Interactions & Climate
Predicting Invasion Hotspots
Coastal Dunes & Ecosystem Services
We conduct field and experimental research at Kellogg Biological Station (KBS), the KBS Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, and computational research with the MSU Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC).
Below are descriptions of our projects:
Macrosystems Biology & Patterns of Biodiversity
Biotic Interactions & Climate
Predicting Invasion Hotspots
Coastal Dunes & Ecosystem Services
Macrosystems Biology & Patterns of Biodiversity
Project 1: Biodiversity Patterns & Drivers Across Scales
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This NSF funded research includes a NSF EF EAGER-NEON award "Using Intraspecific Trait Variation to Understand Processes Structuring Continental-scale Biodiversity Patterns" (2015-2018), and a Macrosystems Biology award "Local- to Continental-Scale Drivers of Biodiversity" (2019-2024)). These projects utilize National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) data on intraspecific trait variation, additional measurements from NEON organismal samples, and data related to NEON sites and samples (e.g., phylogenetic community structure) to determine how assembly processes internal to communities (e.g., biotic interactions, microenvironmental heterogeneity) and large-scale assembly processes external to communities (e.g., climate, land use, disturbance) combine to affect intraspecific trait variation and community structure across the continental United States.
Monitoring shifts in trait variation and can help detect species-level and community-level responses to disturbances, climate and land use change, and invasive species. A key output of the Macrosystems Biology
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Project 2: bioXgeo (Connecting Biodiversity, Geodiversity, and Remote Sensing across Scales)
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Geodiversity is the variation in abiotic features and processes on Earth's surface. This NASA funded Working Group brings together scientists and practitioners in biodiversity and remote sensing to address two main research questions:
(1) How do the relationships between biodiversity and geodiversity change across spatial scales? (2) What derived NASA data products at particular spatial or temporal scales would transform the use of geophysical data by biodiversity scientists and practitioners? Here is our Project Summary.
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Project 3: aquaXterra (Aquatic & Terrestrial Linkages)
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Quantifying linkages between biodiversity and productivity across aquatic and terrestrial realms—and how their relationship varies across spatial scales—is a needed area of research informing biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF). Such investigations determine the spatial extent of interconnectivity of nutrient subsidies, species interactions and habitat use, as well as functional diversity among both realms. In combination with the LAke multi-scaled GeOSpatial and temporal database (LAGOS), we are integrating species occurrence, species trait, and satellite remotely sensed data across USGS Hydrologic Units with the goal of generating a publicly-accessible database.
Goals:
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Project 4: Biodiversity, Cloud Forests, & Species vs. Functional Conservation
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Cloud forests are biodiversity hotspots but climate change is altering cloud layer distribution and thickness. Many of the species residing in cloud forests are data deficient, making it challenging to apply traditional species distribution models. We are working to improve the conservation assessments of a data-deficient species in the Northern Andes by incorporating occurring and functionally similar species occurrence data. This work builds on a project focused on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus Conservation (REDD+), which creates financial incentives to reduce forest land C emissions and to promote C-sequestration in developing countries via sustainable development. Faunal biodiversity is not considered per se in the planning or monitoring process. We investigated >100 REDD+ sites to determine their potential for conserving amphibian, mammal, and bird diversity.
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Biotic Interactions & Climate
Project 1: warmXtrophic: Herbivory & Warming in Early Successional Fields
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We are interested in understanding how biotic interactions and climate change directly and indirectly affect community structure and function. In particular, we are interested in how competition and herbivory interact with warming to affect early successional field community composition, phenology, and plant traits in Michigan.
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Project 2: Multi-species distribution modelingSpecies distribution models (SDMs) provide a means for forecasting species' distributions in space - both now and in the future during climate change. However, such correlative approaches commonly leave out biotic interactions and treat species individually. We incorporate biotic interactions among eastern hemlock, elongate hemlock scale, and hemlock woolly-adelgid, into multi-species (joint) distribution models with ordinal data. Biotic interaction strength can change depending on environmental context; we illustrate an approach to incorporating context dependency into SDMs with barnacles, mussels, and seastars in the Pacific Northwest rocky intertidal system.
A current grant from the State of Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program focuses on the recent invasion of hemlock woolly adelgid to Michigan, with the goals of (1) mapping current distributions of hemlock and hemlock woolly adelgid, and (2) forecasting the future spread of adelgid across the state based on cold tolerance and hemlock landscape connectivity.
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Project 3: Climate and functional trait-mediated species interactions
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Foraging traits could alter the strength of direct and indirect effects of climate warming. We are using microcosm experiments, in situ field experiments, and field surveys of ponds in southwestern Michigan to understand how rising temperatures will interact with predator foraging strategy to alter predator-prey interactions of freshwater invertebrates. We are using experimental results to parameterize mathematical population models forecasting how changing predator-prey interactions may alter invertebrate populations and the structure of freshwater food webs under different RCP climate change scenarios. With funding from NASA (NESSF), we are working to scale up these results to continental scales with the aquaXterra project described above.
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Project 4: Arctic freshwater fish communities
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We are using multivariate autoregressive models to investigate how freshwater fish body condition has changed in response to climate and biotic interactions over 30 years in Arctic lakes. Species include: lake trout, Arctic grayling, round whitefish, slimy sculpin, and burbot.
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Predicting Invasion Hotspots
The freshwater diatom, Didymosphenia geminata, has recently and rapidly invaded New Zealand’s South Island. We are developing predictive models of invasion hotspots throughout New Zealand. These models incorporate dispersal through stream networks, as well as experimentally-derived environmental conditions that lead to bloom conditions. By incorporating these important invasion mechanisms with environmental predictors, the models provide more robust predictions about existing and potential invasion hotspots. In addition to guiding management, these models help identify the biological and physical variables that are most important to successful invasions.
- Lab Members: Phoebe Zarnetske
- Collaborators: Cathy Kilroy (NIWA), Philippe Gerbeaux (DOC), John Leathwick (DOC), Martin Unwin (NIWA), Max Bothwell (Environment Canada)
- Funding: NSF IGERT Ecosystem Informatics, National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, NZ Department of Conservation, Biosecurity New Zealand
Coastal Dunes & Ecosystem Services
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In the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW), the introductions and subsequent invasions of two Ammophila beach grasses caused landscape-scale transformations of coastal dune shape. The grasses created large, continuous, and densely vegetated foredune ridges parallel to the shoreline, replacing the natural sand-shifting and sparsely vegetated environment. The invasions resulted in threatening the Western snowy plover, and declines in some native plants.
At the same time, the large foredunes created by Ammophila provide an important ecosystem service for humans - coastal protection from overtopping waves. This research investigates both the positive and negative effects of these invasions. We seek to understand the biological and physical mechanisms that influence invasion success, community composition, and dune shape, as well as the implications of removing the invaders. It is especially important to understand these mechanisms and implications in light of documented increases in wave heights, and predictions of sea level rise during climate change.
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