Abstract Detail

Floristics & Taxonomy

Edwards, Robert D. [1], Mason, Chase [2], Cartwright, Jennifer [3], Funk, Vicki [4], Thompson, James [5], Goldhaber, Martin [6], Nauman, Travis [7], Pearse, Ian [8], Anacker, Brian [9], Soltis, Pamela S. [10], Bui, Elisabeth [11].

Environmental Drivers of Species Diversity and Turnover in Large, Widespread Radiations of North American Plants (Compositae).

That the environment plays a large role in driving the diversity and distribution of species and communities is well accepted, however the specific environmental factors that drive groups of organisms to diversify remains of great interest to evolutionary and ecological research as well as for conservation and climate change studies. Typically, more readily available climate data (e.g. WorldClim) are used to investigate what predicts species distributions across large scales, however soil, geochemistry and landform, while intuitively important, are often neglected. We assembled the largest species-by-environment matrix for North America with 187 environmental variables associated with over 500,000 plant locality records and representing more than 3,000 species within 14 tribes of the Compositae (daisy family, with more than 1 in 10 flowering plants). Using these data, we have been able to identify which variables are associated with species diversity and turnover, how these interact across space and as the magnitudes of variables change, and find that soil and geochemistry both explain a large proportion of the signal of species diversity and turnover. Many tribes share broad commonalities (e.g. positive relationship between diversity and quartz concentrations) suggesting that innovations to the environment may have driven success within the entire daisy family, however different secondary variables are identified as significant within particular tribes, indicating that distinct environmental preferences may have helped drive subsequent specialization and diversification.

1 - Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, 10th St. & Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20560, USA
2 - University Of Central Florida, Department Of Biology, 4110 Libra Dr, Orlando, FL, 32816, United States
3 - USGS, Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center, 640 Grassmere Park, Suite 100, Nashville, TN, 37211
4 - DEPT OF BOTANY-NHB 166, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC, 20013, United States
5 - West Virginia University, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, 3115 Agricultural Sciences Building, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA
6 - USGS, Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry Science Center, W 6th Ave Kipling St, Lakewood, CO, 80225, USA
7 - USGS, Southwest Biological Science Center, 2290 SW Resource Blvd Moab, UT 84532, 2290 SW Resource Blvd, Moab, UT, 84532, USA
8 - USGS, Fort Collins Science Center, 2150 Centre Avenue, Bldg C, Fort Collins, CO, 80526, USA
9 - City of Boulder, Open Space and Mountain Parks, 66 S Cherryvale Rd, Boulder, CO, 80303, USA
10 - University Of Florida, Florida Museum Of Natural History, Po Box 117800, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States
11 - CSIRO, Land and Water, Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

Keywords:
Asteraceae
Compositae
species diversity
Species Turnover
Geochemistry
Soil
climate
North America.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 46, Floristics & Taxonomy
Location: 105/Mayo Civic Center
Date: Wednesday, July 25th, 2018
Time: 4:45 PM
Number: 46013
Abstract ID:774
Candidate for Awards:None