NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Restoring tropical ecosystems using the wealth of information in rare plant collections

Werden Leland K, Honolulu HI

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. Rapid human alteration of global processes and the degradation of ecosystems worldwide have led to a sixth mass-extinction event. To counteract these outcomes, botanical gardens and arboreta are leading the charge in the conservation and reintroduction of threatened and endangered plant species. Achieving these goals is challenging and determining how reintroduction outcomes are influenced by responses of threatened and endangered plants to environmental conditions at reintroduction sites could greatly improve conservation practice. However, there is still lack a basic understanding of the characteristics of threatened and endangered plants necessary to undertake these efforts. To address this, the fellow will focus on using the wealth of information on threatened and endangered plant species contained in living botanical collections to understand plant reintroduction outcomes, a novel use of these underutilized resources. To connect with the broader community the fellow will mentor undergraduate students underrepresented in the biological sciences and develop an education module on threatened and endangered plant conservation for K-12 students and the general public. The overall goal of this project is to determine the effects of environmental filtering on tropical threatened and endangered woody plant reintroductions. Many studies have focused on the importance of environmental filters in structuring plant communities, but most are limited in their ability to do so directly because they do not exclude competition. The fellow will use Hawaiian threatened and endangered reintroductions, where competition is excluded, as a model system to test the effects of environmental filtering on plant performance. Using this approach, and data from living threatened and endangered plant collections, the fellow will address the following questions: (Q1) How do the range of functional strategies possessed by Hawaiian threatened and endangered plant species differ from common invasive species? (Q2) What factors underlie threatened and endangered plant reintroduction outcomes? (Q3) How can trait multidimensionality inform the design of effective threatened and endangered plant reintroductions? This project will lead to a more thorough understanding of how species' trait syndromes mediate performance along abiotic gradients, while improving threatened and endangered plant reintroductions worldwide. These activities will significantly expand the fellow's expertise by providing training in the use of modeling approaches to determine how trait multidimensionality drives community assembly. Additionally, the fellow will develop a hands-on training workshop for undergraduate and graduate students focused on integrating plant functional traits into restoration and reintroduction projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.