Predicting plant community responses to changes in productivity and disturbance: the importance of species traits, community size, and resource availability

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Chris Catano, JOnathan Myers, ashley knudson

Spatial processes such as dispersal, landscape connectivity, and heterogeneity can have important influences on community assembly and biodiversity. Chris Catano, PhD candidate in the Myers lab, is investigating the causes and consequences of changing environments on biodiversity, specifically by investigating how these spatial processes influence community assembly following disturbance, the ways species coexist, and the role biodiversity plays for producing and stabilizing ecosystem functions.