This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009 using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The training and development plan is entitled "Using Evolutionary & Functional Turnover in Community Structure to Elucidate Processes of Community Assembly" for James C. Stegen. The host institution for this research is the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and the sponsoring scientist is Allen H. Hurlbert.
Community ecology aims to understand processes that influence community structure. This knowledge informs predictions regarding impacts of global change on biological communities. To this end, analyses of community structure that include species' functional roles and evolutionary relationships provide greater insight than traditional analyses. This research quantifies turnover in community structure with respect to the function and evolutionary position of trees, birds, and mammals throughout North America. A major focus of this work is to quantify the effect of spatial separation (geographic distance) relative to climatic differences on community turnover to better understand how these communities respond to ongoing global change. This study will therefore provide critical information for mitigating the deterioration of biological communities and the services they provide to human societies.
Training goals include broadening theoretical skills and developing a strong bioinformatics experience. Several outreach activities are being implemented, including (i) co-teaching a bioinformatics course; (ii) providing bioinformatics training to undergraduate researchers and high school students through a NSF-funded research program; and (iii) building a bioinformatics website focused on modeling and bioinformatics computer code and information regarding how bioinformatics can be used to address the impacts of global change.
