Akana Noto

Goucher College

Intraspecific diversity can affect the ecological function of communities. Because community function is the outcome of species interactions, understanding how intraspecific diversity affects species interactions may shed light on the mechanism by which intraspecific diversity affects communities. Competition among and within plant species may be p...

Although the effects of species diversity on food web stability have long been recognized, relatively little is known about the influence of intraspecific diversity. Empirical work has found that intraspecific diversity can increase community resilience and resistance, but few theoretical studies have attempted to use modeling approaches to determi...

Diversity within species can have community‐level effects similar in magnitude to those of species diversity. Intraspecific diversity in producers and consumers has separately been shown to affect trophic interactions, yet we have little understanding of how variation at these two levels could simultaneously affect trophic interactions. Salt marshe...

The strength of species interactions often varies geographically and locally with environmental conditions. Competitive interactions are predicted to be stronger in benign environments while facilitation is expected to be stronger in harsh ones. We tested these ideas with an aboveground neighbor removal experiment at six salt marshes along the Cali...

Background: Mesocosm experiments have become increasingly popular in climate change research as they bridge the gap between small-scale, less realistic, microcosm experiments, and large-scale, more complex, natural systems. Characteristics of aquatic mesocosm designs (e.g., mesocosm volume, study duration, and replication) vary widely, potentially...

Environmental variability and the frequency of extreme events are predicted to increase in future climate scenarios; however, the role of fluctuations in shaping community composition, diversity and stability is not well understood. Identifying current patterns of association between measures of community stability and climatic means and variabilit...

Climate change shuffles species ranges and creates novel interactions that may either buffer communities against climate change or exacerbate its effect. For instance, facilitation can become more prevalent in salt marshes under stressful conditions while competition is stronger in benign environments. Sea-level rise (SLR) is a consequence of clima...

Distance-based redundancy analysis of plant community composition. Shown at TJ (left) and KF (right). Only species with scores >0.1 were included in this plot. (DOCX)

Subordinate species cover in relation to realized S. pacifica cover. Cover is shown at high (black), medium (green) and low (red) elevations at KF (top) and TJ (bottom). Solid lines indicate significant relationships while dotted lines indicate non-significance. Dashed lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. (DOCX)

Species that occur along broad environmental gradients often vary in phenotypic traits that make them better adapted to local conditions. Variation in species interactions across gradients could therefore be due to either phenotypic differences among populations or environmental conditions that shift the balance between competition and facilitation...

Background/Question/Methods Species that occur along large environmental gradients can display corresponding variation in traits that make them better adapted to local conditions. In stressful environments, the Stress-Gradient Hypothesis predicts that interactions will be more facilitative, but it is unclear whether interactions differ along envi...