9311526 Jurik Dicranopteris linearis, a fern, is one of the most wide-ranging species in the Old World tropics. This weedy, understory species is capable of colonizing severely disturbed habitats such as landslides and lava flows, but also can dominate late-successional forests and plantations. Preliminary studies on Mauna Loa volcano, Hawaii, indicate that this fern has impacts on forest productivity and nutrient cycling that are disproportionately large, relative to the fern's size. The physiological mechanisms and morphological attributes that enable this species to dominate many sites, and that limit its appearance on other sites, will be explored and related to broader scale community and ecosystem patterns of plant productivity and nutrient cycling. The integration of these various perspectives yields an unprecedented opportunity to elucidate some of the plant-level mechanisms that control ecosystem- level processes. It will be possible to test rigorously the effect of temperature on this fern's physiology, growth and dominance and to relate these responses to community and ecosystem-level dynamics. %%% The study of Dicranopteris linearis along a gradient of sites that vary primarily in temperature also provides an opportunity to relate the warming effect of global climate change to vegetational patterns and processes. The study of how leaf-level processes in Dicranopteris are linked to community-dominance patterns and ecosystem-level processes along a temperature gradient will increase our understanding of how species, communities and ecosystems may respond to global climate change. ***
