Harmonizing ecological theories to assess and predict forest biodiversity

Please join us for the second talk of our BGC 2024 Fall Seminar Series with Dr. David Luther. Dr. Luther is an Associate Professor in the Biology Department at George Mason University whose research focuses on behavioral ecology, evolution, and conservation biology.

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Abstract

Temperature, precipitation and productivity organize ecosystems at broad scales and drive biodiversity within different biomes, yet at local scales the strength of these predictors is not consistent. Here we test the relative importance of 3-dimensional habitat structure, compared to temperature, precipitations and productivity, as a link between local and broad-scale patterns of species and functional diversity in temperate forest ecosystems of North America. Habitat structure better predicts species and functional diversity across forest ecosystems when compared against productivity, temperature, and elevation gradients. We extend these results to the hyperdiverse Amazon rainforest to test the habitat heterogeneity diversity and find that vertical structural heterogeneity has strong associations with local bird and mammal diversity and could be an essential tool for remotely predicting local biodiversity in tropical forests.

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