Six central questions about biological invasions to which NEON data science is poised to contribute

Gill, Nathan S.; Mahood, Adam L.; Meier, Courtney L.; Muthukrishnan, Ranjan; Nagy, R. Chelsea; Stricker, Eva; Duffy, K. A.; Petri, Laís; Morisette, Jeffrey T.

doi:10.1002/ecs2.3728

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…Although invasive species pose threats to native biodiversity (Simberloff 2005), addressing the effect of a single invasion on Environmental Conservation its own may have little impact on the recovery of native plants when other stressors are at play (Gill et al 2018), possibly including other interacting invasive species (Simberloff & Von Holle 1999, D'Antonio et al 2017, Gill et al 2021b. Our findings have refined our understanding of the factors contributing to the success and demise of P. sclerocarpa, although other factors may also be at play, such as the influence of P. pilosa, possible seed predation by (introduced) small mammals, loss of pollinators or dispersers (Pratt et al 2011) or a change in soil microbiota or chemistry due to altered plant communities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: effects of volcanic heat and other stressors on the conservation of a critically endangered plant in Hawai‘i

et al. 2023

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Summary Loss of local biodiversity resulting from abrupt environmental change is a significant environmental problem throughout the world. Extinctions of plants are particularly important yet are often overlooked. Drawing from a case in Hawai‘i, a global hotspot for plant and other extinctions, we demonstrate an effort to better understand and determine priorities for the management of an endangered plant (‘Ihi makole or Portulaca sclerocarpa) in the face of rapid and extreme environmental change. Volcanic heat emissions and biological invasions have anecdotally been suggested as possible threats to the species. We integrated P. sclerocarpa outplanting with efforts to collect geological and ecological data to gauge the role of elevated soil temperatures and invasive grasses in driving P. sclerocarpa mortality and population decline. We measured soil temperature, soil depth, surrounding cover and P. sclerocarpa survivorship over three decades. The abundance of wild P. sclerocarpa decreased by 99.7% from the 1990s to 2021. Only 51% of outplantings persisted through 3–4 years. Binomial regression and structural equation modelling revealed that, among the variables we analysed, high soil temperatures were most strongly associated with population decline. Finding the niche where soil temperatures are low enough to allow P. sclerocarpa survival but high enough to limit other agents of P. sclerocarpa mortality may be necessary to increase population growth of this species.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: effects of volcanic heat and other stressors on the conservation of a critically endangered plant in Hawai‘i

et al. 2023

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“…NEON began collecting data on a myriad of ecosystem components using consistent protocols and observers at a handful of sites in 2014, eventually coming into full operation at 47 terrestrial sites across the United States in 2019. NEON data have great potential for use in plant ecology studies (Gill et al, 2021;Muthukrishnan et al, 2022), and are just now reaching a point in their lifespan where they have the potential to reveal groundbreaking insights, particularly when joined to an unprecedented array of in situ and remotely-sensed ancillary data collected at each NEON site (Meier, Thibault and Barnett, 2023). NEON technicians collect plant presence, cover and height annually or sub-annually around peak productivity, in a multiscalar framework (Barnett et al, 2019;NEON, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

neonPlantEcology: an R package for preparing NEON plant data for use in ecological research.

Mahood,

Macdonald,

Muthukrishnan

et al. 2024

Preprint

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The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale endeavor of ecological data collection for 30 years. We created a software package, neonPlantEcology that automatically arranges the raw data from the plant presence and percent cover (DP1.10058.001) data product from NEON into tables familiar to plant ecologists. Because of the broad scale of the observatory, it is necessary to tailor the data collection to the idiosyncrasies of each of 47 different ecosystems. Furthermore, data collection practices are occasionally modified for various reasons. These complexities, along with the volume and multiscalar nature of the data, need to be understood and accounted for in order to correctly process the data. This is particularly true for the plant diversity data product. We present three case studies using the package, centered around the three primary functions of neonPlantEcology. By automating the process of preparing NEON’s plant diversity data, neonPlantEcology makes it more accessible to a wide range of users.

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“…They will also provide an unprecedented opportunity to do novel, integrative biology in the historic natural settings in which populations evolved and the intensely human-modified contexts that dominate much of the landscape today. We believe the time has come for organismal biology to take full advantage of observatory networks, a view espoused by others regarding the outcomes of biological invasions ( Gill et al. 2021 ) and the identification of “tipping points” in ecosystems ( Muthukrishnan et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Organisms Using Ecological Observatory Networks

Dantzer,

Mabry,

Bernhardt

et al. 2023

Integrative Organismal Biology

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Human activities are rapidly changing ecosystems around the world. These changes have widespread implications for the preservation of biodiversity, agricultural productivity, prevalence of zoonotic diseases, and socio-political conflict. To understand and improve the predictive capacity for these and other biological phenomena, some scientists are now relying on observatory networks, which are often composed of systems of sensors, teams of field researchers, and databases of abiotic and biotic measurements across multiple temporal and spatial scales. One well-known example is NEON, the US-based National Ecological Observatory Network. Although NEON and similar networks have informed studies of population, community, and ecosystem ecology for years, they have been minimally used by organismal biologists. NEON provides organismal biologists, in particular those interested in NEON's focal taxa, with an unprecedented opportunity to study phenomena such as range expansions, disease epidemics, invasive species colonization, macrophysiology, and other biological processes that fundamentally involve organismal variation. Here, we use NEON as an exemplar of the promise of observatory networks for understanding the causes and consequences of morphological, behavioral, molecular, and physiological variation among individual organisms.

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Six central questions about biological invasions to which NEON data science is poised to contribute

Abstract: Morisette. 2021. Six central questions about biological invasions to which NEON data science is poised to contribute.

Cited by 14 publications

References 97 publications

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: effects of volcanic heat and other stressors on the conservation of a critically endangered plant in Hawai‘i

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: effects of volcanic heat and other stressors on the conservation of a critically endangered plant in Hawai‘i

neonPlantEcology: an R package for preparing NEON plant data for use in ecological research.

Understanding Organisms Using Ecological Observatory Networks

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