publications

2025

1. Preprint

   Phylogenetic diversity and species diversity are decoupled under experimental warming and cooling in Rocky Mountain plant communities

   Leah N Veldhuisen , Lorah Seltzer , Jocelyn Navarro, and 2 more authors

   bioRxiv, 2025

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   Aim Nearly 8% of species could go extinct from climate change; many organisms are already experiencing declines in abundance, local extinction, and range shifts. How such changes impact community diversity is an open question in most systems. Whether changes in phylogenetic diversity parallel those in traditional diversity metrics is also often unknown. We used experimentally transplanted plant communities to ask how different aspects of community diversity change with environmental factors across elevation, and whether phylogenetic relationships predict individual species responses to change. We experimentally transplanted subalpine plant communities down and upslope across 400 m of elevation at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Gothic, CO, USA, to simulate climate warming and cooling. We identified how experimental warming and cooling impacted community diversity by testing for differences in species richness, Shannon diversity, and phylogenetic diversity among transplant treatments. We tested for phylogenetic signal in each species change in percent cover among treatments. Finally, we assessed if aspects of species rarity (and thus their putative extinction risk) predicted post-transplant change independently or in addition to their phylogenetic relationship within the community. We found that species richness and Shannon diversity decreased in cooled treatments and increased in some warmed treatments. In contrast, phylogenetic diversity increased in the cooled treatment and did not change in the warmed treatments. Individual species changes in response to warming and cooling were not correlated with phylogeny or aspects of rarity. Our results suggest that species losses in cooled treatments are phylogenetically dispersed, increasing phylogenetic diversity, even as richness and Shannon diversity decline. Increasing richness and Shannon diversity in warmed treatments suggests that new species from across the phylogeny can colonize after transplantation, leading to stability in phylogenetic diversity under warming at this time scale, with further change likely as extinction debts are paid.

2. Scientific Data Journal

   Plant traits and associated ecological data from global change experiments and climate gradients in Norway

   Scientific Data, 2025

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   Plant functional trait-based approaches are powerful tools to assess the consequences of global environmental changes for plant ecophysiology, population and community ecology, ecosystem functioning, and landscape ecology. Here, we present data capturing these ecological dimensions from grazing, nitrogen addition, and warming experiments conducted along a 821 m a.s.l. elevation gradient and from a climate warming experiment conducted across a 3,200 mm precipitation gradient in boreal and alpine grasslands in Vestland County, western Norway. From these systems we collected 28,762 plant and leaf functional trait measurements from 76 vascular plant species, 88 leaf assimilation-temperature responses, 577 leaf handheld hyperspectral readings, 2.26 billion leaf temperature measurements, 3,696 ecosystem CO2 flux measurements, and 10.69 ha of multispectral (10-band) and RGB cm-resolution imagery from 4,648 individual images obtained from airborne sensors. These data augment existing longer-term data on local climate, soils, plant populations, plant community composition, and ecosystem functioning from within the same experiments and study systems and from similar systems in other mountain regions globally.

2024

1. Scientific Data Journal

   Plant trait and vegetation data along a 1314 m elevation gradient with fire history in Puna grasslands, Perú

   Aud H Halbritter , Vigdis Vandvik , Sehoya H Cotner , and 59 more authors

   Scientific Data, 2024

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   Alpine grassland vegetation supports globally important biodiversity and ecosystems that are increasingly threatened by climate warming and other environmental changes. Trait-based approaches can support understanding of vegetation responses to global change drivers and consequences for ecosystem functioning. In six sites along a 1314 m elevational gradient in Puna grasslands in the Peruvian Andes, we collected datasets on vascular plant composition, plant functional traits, biomass, ecosystem fluxes, and climate data over three years. The data were collected in the wet and dry season and from plots with different fire histories. We selected traits associated with plant resource use, growth, and life history strategies (leaf area, leaf dry/wet mass, leaf thickness, specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, leaf C, N, P content, C and N isotopes). The trait dataset contains 3,665 plant records from 145 taxa, 54,036 trait measurements (increasing the trait data coverage of the regional flora by 420%) covering 14 traits and 121 plant taxa (ca. 40% of which have no previous publicly available trait data) across 33 families.

2023

1. Field Safety Manual

   Field Work Safety Guidebook Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

   Jocelyn Navarro, Mae Berlow , and Leah Veldhuisen

   University of Arizona, 2023

2022

1. New Phytologist Journal

   Phenotypic plasticity and selection on leaf traits in response to snowmelt timing and summer precipitation

   Jocelyn Navarro, John M Powers , Ayaka Paul , and 1 more author

   New Phytologist, 2022

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   Vegetative traits of plants can respond directly to changes in the environment, such as those occurring under climate change. That phenotypic plasticity could be adaptive, maladaptive, or neutral. We manipulated the timing of spring snowmelt and amount of summer precipitation in factorial combination and examined responses of specific leaf area (SLA), trichome density, leaf water content (LWC), photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) in the subalpine herb Ipomopsis aggregata. The experiment was repeated in three years differing in natural timing of snowmelt. To examine natural selection, we used survival, relative growth rate, and flowering as fitness indices. A 50% reduction in summer precipitation reduced stomatal conductance and increased iWUE, and doubled precipitation increased LWC. Combining natural and experimental variation, earlier snowmelt reduced soil moisture, photosynthetic rate and stomatal conductance, and increased trichome density and iWUE. Precipitation reduction reversed the mortality selection favoring high stomatal conductance under normal and doubled precipitation, and higher LWC improved growth. Earlier snowmelt is a strong signal of climate change and can change expression of leaf morphology and gas exchange traits, just as reduced precipitation can. Stomatal conductance and SLA showed adaptive plasticity under some conditions.

2021

1. Ecology and
   Evolution Journal

   Next-generation field courses: Integrating Open Science and online learning

   Sonya R. Geange , Jonathan Oppen , Tanya Strydom , and 16 more authors

   Ecology and Evolution, 2021

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   As Open Science practices become more commonplace, there is a need for the next generation of scientists to be well versed in these aspects of scientific research. Yet, many training opportunities for early career researchers (ECRs) could better emphasize or integrate Open Science elements. Field courses provide opportunities for ECRs to apply theoretical knowledge, practice new methodological approaches, and gain an appreciation for the challenges of real-life research, and could provide an excellent platform for integrating training in Open Science practices. Our recent experience, as primarily ECRs engaged in a field course interrupted by COVID-19, led us to reflect on the potential to enhance learning outcomes in field courses by integrating Open Science practices and online learning components. Specifically, we highlight the opportunity for field courses to align teaching activities with the recent developments and trends in how we conduct research, including training in: publishing registered reports, collecting data using standardized methods, adopting high-quality data documentation, managing data through reproducible workflows, and sharing and publishing data through appropriate channels. We also discuss how field courses can use online tools to optimize time in the field, develop open access resources, and cultivate collaborations. By integrating these elements, we suggest that the next generation of field courses will offer excellent arenas for participants to adopt Open Science practices.