Fieldwork in the lab currently focuses on the evolutionary ecology of Scleropodium, a moss genus that recently diversified in California. At Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, a local field site where all species in the genus occur in sympatry, we study fine-scale niche partitioning to understand how and why these closely related species coexist.
Earlier work indicates that the species diverged less than 5 million years ago, and they currently can be found growing together (at the scale of centimeters to meters). This makes Scleropodium a nice system for understanding the correspondence between lineage diversification and niche evolution. Pictured here is one of our ibutton dataloggers recording the microclimate experienced by a single moss patch. We use a network of these tiny sensors to test whether microclimatic differences determine where species occur within the landscape. |
Greenhouse experiments
We are running a large greenhouse experiment to test whether Scleropodium species can outcompete each other over a range of moisture conditions. This competition experiment complements the field studies by illustrating whether observed distributions are dictated by abiotic conditions (i.e. microclimate) or by competitive exclusion... or both.
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Reciprocal transplants
Four species of Scleropodium are terrestrial and two occur in seasonally inundated microsites. To test whether the terrestrial species are excluded from inundated sites due to physiological constraints (and vice versa), we transplant each species inside their realized niche and outside their realized niche.
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Ecological measurements
In addition to microclimatic differences, we also study other ecological parameters, for example substrate, to determine how these interact with microclimate to dictate where species occur.
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