Concepts

Global temperature increase and associated changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather affecting ecosystems worldwide

The ratio of leaf area to dry mass, often associated with dry conditions as it reduces surface area and water loss from the leaf

Manipulative experiments that alter abiotic conditions or reciprocally transplant individuals to understand and predict the effects of environmental change on biological communities and ecosystem func...

The functioning of ecosystems including processes such as carbon and nutrient cycling and storage, community- and ecosystem-level responses, and overall ecosystem properties and processes

Raw material on which ecological and evolutionary processes act - variation of traits within species that can mediate responses to biotic and abiotic factors

Net production of plant biomass above ground surface measured as standing crop minus losses to herbivores

The microbiome's ability to extract energy from dietary sources

effects of behavioral or life history decisions on individual reproductive success and survival

Variation in interspecific interactions across time periods over which organisms co-occur that leads to flexible network structure

Temporal variation in environmental conditions measured as standard deviation of temperature and vegetation indices

How tree growth and biomass allocation patterns change based on local neighborhood tree density and competition

Population size or density of individual species within a habitat

Changes in network composition between treatments, partitioned into species turnover versus interaction rewiring components

Plant characteristics that reflect ecological strategies, including specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content

Statistical method for recognizing evolutionarily independent lineages based on genealogical patterns in molecular data

Variation in organismal body size both within and between species, influenced by environmental and genetic factors

Measure of soil acidity/alkalinity that may influence plant phenotype expression

Accounting framework that tracks carbon inputs, transformations, and outputs in environmental systems to quantify net carbon fluxes

Measurable morphological and physiological characteristics of organisms that influence ecological performance

Variation in soil moisture conditions creating distinct dry and wet meadow habitat types

The geographic or environmental boundaries beyond which species cannot persist, potentially influenced by biotic interactions

Geographic classification system used to reduce complexity and simplify presentation of continental-scale results

Movement of seeds away from parent plants through various mechanisms including wind, animals, and gravity

Predicts that species interactions should disappear at the stressful end of environmental gradients where abiotic conditions constrain species ranges

Future climate scenarios based on different greenhouse gas emission pathways, specifically RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios

The relative proportions of essential macronutrients (proteins, lipids, carbohydrates) in pollen samples

Describes consistent and strong correlations among plant functional traits reflecting the ecological tradeoffs and constraints of plants around resource use

Distinct phases of bee flight period: emergence from nests, timing of peak abundance of foragers, and senescence

The constraint of microbial activity and carbon respiration by water availability in soil systems

Theory providing mass-metabolism scaling rules that relate metabolic rate to organism mass through allometric relationships

The reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species driven by natural selection, where adaptations of one species create selective pressures on another species