Among many other influences of global climate change on ecological interactions, loss of biodiversity has cascading impacts along various ecological scales, with concomitant influences on function. The idea that species that have diverged from a common ancestor more recently might also have ecologically diverged more recently ignited a research program investigating the predictiveness of phylogenetic diversity on BEF, in addition to species richness and functional diversity as predictors

To our knowledge, our experiment (in collaboration with Dr. Amy Wolf, Dr. Caroline Farrior and Sarah Ortiz) is the first to determine the impact of phylogenetically structured biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning across various climate change scenarios of abiotic and biotic pressures. Specifically, the questions I’m interested in investigating with this project are: Are resource acquisition or interaction traits that have a phylogenetic signal more or less predictive of various ecosystem functions? Is phylogenetic diversity or functional diversity a better predictor of BEF under abiotic or biotic pressures?

Field work for this project has been conducted January to June in 2021 and 2022 in the Brackenridge Field Labs, Austin, TX.