Jennifer A Schweitzer

University of Tennessee | UTK · Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Species rarity is a common phenomenon across global ecosystems that is becoming increasingly more common under climate change. Although species rarity is often considered to be a stochastic response to environmental and ecological constraints, we examined the hypothesis that plant rarity is a consequence of natural selection acting on performance t...

Rare species are often considered inferior competitors due to occupancy of small ranges, specific habitats, and small local populations. However, the phylogenetic relatedness and rarity level (level 1–7 and common) of interacting species in plant-plant interactions are not often considered when predicting the response of rare plants in a biotic con...

Understanding drivers of terrestrial fungal communities over large scales is an important challenge for predicting the fate of ecosystems under climate change and providing critical ecological context for bioengineering plant–microbe interactions in model systems. We conducted an extensive molecular and microscopy field study across the contiguous...

Sky islands are unique geologic formations, home to populations of organisms that have weathered climate change since the Pleistocene. Long-term isolation and climatic differences between sky islands and adjacent mountain chains result in natural laboratories well suited for examining the direct effects of climate change. Here, we review the global...

Fire is an inherently evolutionary process, even though much more emphasis has been given to ecological responses of plants and their associated communities to fire. Here, we synthesize contributions to a Special Feature entitled ‘Fire as a dynamic ecological and evolutionary force’ and place them in a broader context of fire research. Topics cover...

Abstract As human populations expand and land‐use change intensifies, terrestrial ecosystems experience concurrent disturbances (e.g., urbanization and fire) that may interact and compound their effects on biodiversity. In the urbanizing landscapes of the southern Appalachian region of the United States of America (US), fires in mesic forests have...

Purpose While distinct soil microbiomes and individual soil microbial taxa can alter particular plant traits under highly controlled conditions, little is known about the role of particular microbial taxa and microbial functions within complex soil microbial communities for mediating plant phenotypes or if the strength of microbial mediation of pla...

Climate change is having profound effects on species distributions and is likely altering the distribution of genetic variation across landscapes. Maintaining population genetic diversity is essential for the survival of species facing rapid environmental change, and variation loss will further ecological and evolutionary change. We used trait valu...

Identifying and predicting how species ranges will shift in response to climate change is paramount for conservation and restoration. Ecological niche models are the most common method used to estimate potential distributions of species; however, they traditionally omit knowledge of intraspecific variation that can allow populations to respond uniq...

Research on the evolutionary ecology of urban areas reveals how human-induced evolutionary changes affect biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. In a rapidly urbanizing world imposing many selective pressures, a time-sensitive goal is to identify the emergent issues and research priorities that affect the ecology and evolution of species wi...

It has been firmly established that oak regeneration benefits from prescribed burning and reduced competition with fire-intolerant tree species. Despite recommendations for research on the role of the microsite environment for oak regeneration, very little is known about the interacting effects of fire, soil, and surrounding plant community on oak...

Wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity as drier and warmer climates increase plant detrital fuel loads. At the same time, increases in urbanization position 9% of fire-prone land within the United States at the wildland–urban interface. While rarely studied, the compounded effects of urbanization and wildfires may have unknown synergis...

Identifying the potential for natural soil microbial communities to predictably affect complex plant traits is an important frontier in climate change research. Plant phenology varies with environmental and genetic factors, but few studies have examined whether the soil microbiome interacts with plant population differentiation to affect phenology...

Soil microbiomes are rapidly becoming known as an important driver of plant phenotypic variation and may mediate plant responses to environmental factors. However, integrating spatial scales relevant to climate change with plant intraspecific genetic variation and soil microbial ecology is difficult, making studies of broad inference rare. Here we...

Why this research Matters The objective of this study was to understand how genetic variation in a riparian species, Populus angustifolia, affects mass and energy exchange between the land and atmosphere across ~1,700 km of latitude of the western United States. To examine the potential for large‐scale land–atmosphere feedbacks in hydrologic proces...

Past research on plant-soil feedbacks (PSF), largely undertaken in highly controlled greenhouse conditions, has established that plant species differentially alter abiotic and biotic soil conditions that in turn affect growth of other conspecific and heterospecific individuals in that soil. Yet, whether feedbacks under controlled greenhouse conditi...

Global change is widely altering environmental conditions which makes accurately predicting species range limits across natural landscapes critical for conservation and management decisions. If climate pressures along elevation gradients influence the distribution of phenotypic and genetic variation of plant functional traits, then such trait varia...

Aims Plant-microbial-soil interactions are key to understanding plant community succession, invasion success, patterns of biodiversity and aspects of ecosystem function. Yet root and rhizosphere chemistry is highly complex, and little is known about natural variation across environmental gradients. Variation in tree species root chemical phenotypes...

Genetic variation in the chemistry of plant leaves can have ecosystem‐level consequences. Here, we address the hypothesis that genetic variation in foliar condensed tannins along a Populus hybridization gradient influences soil ammonia oxidizers, a group of autotrophic microorganisms that perform the first step of nitrification and are not dependen...

Unifying ecosystem ecology and evolutionary biology promises a more complete understanding of the processes that link different levels of biological organization across space and time. Feedbacks across levels of organization link theory associated with eco‐evolutionary dynamics, niche construction and the geographic mosaic theory of co‐evolution. W...

We examined the hypothesis that climate‐driven evolution of plant traits will influence associated soil microbiomes and ecosystem function across the landscape. Using a foundation tree species, Populus angustifolia, observational and common garden approaches, and a base population genetic collection that spans 17 river systems in the western United...

Plant species that occur in different soil nutrient environments often vary in plant functional traits that affect soil nutrient cycling, creating positive feedbacks that reinforce nutrient availability. Variation in such nutrient feedbacks could affect plant fitness, but few studies have explored the eco‐evolutionary dynamics of within‐species nut...

Theoretical models pertaining to feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes are prevalent in multiple biological fields. An integrative overview is currently lacking, due to little crosstalk between the fields and the use of different methodological approaches. Here, we review a wide range of models of eco‐evolutionary feedbacks and hi...

Plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) are important drivers of plant community structure and diversity, with species varying in the way they both condition soils and respond to them. While plant phylogenetic relationships alone can predict this variation in some instances, trait conservatism across phylogenies may provide more reliable predictions. Using int...

The interactions among plants, soil biotic communities, and soil are increasingly shown to be important in ecology but are underappreciated in evolutionary biology. Through genetic interactions among co-occurring taxa, plants and the biotic soil community influence the fitness and performance of each over time. At the intraspecific level, variation...

1. Theoretical models pertaining to feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes are prevalent in multiple biological fields. An integrative overview is currently lacking, due to little crosstalk between the fields and the use of different methodological approaches. 2. Here we review a wide range of models of eco-evolutionary feedbacks a...

Plant–microbial feedbacks are important drivers of plant community structure and dynamics. These feedbacks are driven by the variable modification of soil microbial communities by different plant species. However, other factors besides plant species can influence soil communities and potentially interact with plant–microbial feedbacks. We tested fo...

Under increasing anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition, some plant species will thrive while others will not. Previous work has shown that plant phylogeny can predict these responses, and that interactions with mycorrhizal fungi are a mechanism that drives variation in plant responses to N enrichment. Yet, much of this work has ignored the roles of...

Human activity is causing wild populations to experience rapid trait change and local extirpation. The resulting effects on intraspecific variation could have substantial consequences for ecological processes and ecosystem services. Although researchers have long acknowledged that variation among species influences the surrounding environment, only...

Contemporary global change, including the widespread mortality of foundation tree species, is altering ecosystems and plant communities at unprecedented rates. Plant–soil interactions drive myriad community dynamics, and we hypothesized that such interactions may be an important driver of succession following the loss of foundation tree species. We...

Elevation gradients are frequently used as space-for-time substitutions to infer species’ trait responses to climate change. However, studies rarely investigate whether trait responses to elevation are widespread or population-specific within a species, and the relative genetic and plastic contributions to such trait responses may not be well under...

Increasing rates of anthropogenic nitrogen (N) enrichment to soils often lead to the dominance of nitrophilic plant species and reduce plant diversity in natural ecosystems. Yet, we lack a framework to predict which species will be winners or losers in soil N enrichment scenarios, a framework that current literature suggests should integrate plant...

When plants colonize new habitats altered by natural or anthropogenic disturbances, those individuals may encounter biotic and abiotic conditions novel to the species, which can cause plant functional trait divergence. Over time, site-driven adaptation can give rise to population-level genetic variation, with consequences for plant community dynami...

Plant–soil feedbacks (PSF) are important interactions that may influence range dynamics in a changing world. What remains largely unknown is the generality of plant–soil biotic interactions across populations and the potential role of specific soil biota, both of which are key for understanding how PSF might change future communities and ecosystems...

Plants are dependent on their root systems for survival, and thus are defended from belowground enemies by a range of strategies, including plant secondary metabolites (PSMs). These compounds vary among species, and an understanding of this variation may provide generality in predicting the susceptibility of forest trees to belowground enemies and...

Numerous studies have demonstrated biodiversity–productivity relationships in plant communities, and analogous genetic diversity–productivity studies using genotype mixtures of single species may show similar patterns. Alternatively, competing individuals among genotypes within a species are less likely to exhibit resource‐use complementarity, even...

While an appreciation of plant–soil feedbacks ( PSF ) continues to expand for community and ecosystem ecology, the eco‐evolutionary mechanisms and consequences of such feedbacks remain largely unknown or untested. Determining the cause and effect of plant phenotypes is central for understanding these eco‐evolutionary dynamics since phenotypes respo...

Decades of research show that plants vary in their growth responses to increasing soil nitrogen (N), supporting theory on evolutionary trade‐offs between competitive and conservative growth strategies. However, we lack an explicit examination of the evolutionary processes guiding trade‐offs in competitive and conservative growth responses to N addi...

Biodiversity at many scales (functional group, species, genetic) can result in emergent ecological patterns. Here we explore the influence of tree genotypic variation and diversity on in-stream ecosystem processes and aquatic communities. We test whether genetically diverse inputs of leaf litter interact with a keystone organism, anadromous salmon,...

Recent work has demonstrated that the presence or abundance of specific genotypes, populations, species and phylogenetic clades may influence community and ecosystem properties such as resilience or productivity. Many ecological studies, however, use simple linear models to test for such relationships, including species identity as the predictor va...

Community genetics studies frequently focus on individual communities associated with individual plant genotypes, but little is known about the genetically based relationships among taxonomically and spatially disparate communities. We integrate studies of a wide range of communities living on the same plant genotypes to understand how the ecologic...

Humans are extensively changing the global environment, both by altering abiotic conditions through increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) and reactive nitrogen (N), and by driving patterns of extinctions and introductions that shift community composition and affect the biotic environment. Evolutionary history may play an important role in determining p...

A major frontier in global change research is predicting how multiple agents of global change will alter plant productivity, a critical component of the carbon cycle. Recent research has shown that plant responses to climate change are phylogenetically conserved such that species within some lineages are more productive than those within other line...

Species ranges have been shifting since the Pleistocene, whereby fragmentation, isolation, and the subsequent reduction in gene flow have resulted in local adaptation of novel genotypes and the repeated evolution of endemic species. While there is a wide body of literature focused on understanding endemic species, very few studies empirically test...

Background/Question/Methods Plant-soil feedbacks are important drivers of ecosystem structure, productivity and diversity and are increasingly viewed as an important link in understanding the consequences of global change. Plants may condition soils through the addition of chemical compounds and organic matter as well as providing habitat for mic...

Background/Question/Methods Prescribed fire has been used extensively as a prairie restoration tool, but its specific impacts on prairie plant communities are not always interpreted within a spatially or evolutionarily explicit framework. For example, plant community responses to fire can be related to both treatment scale and the selective impac...

Background/Question/Methods Linking evolutionary history to contemporary ecological interactions is a burgeoning field that is bringing with it many new insights into the relationship between biodiversity, species interactions, and ecosystem function. Species ranges have been shifting since the Pleistocene, whereby fragmentation, isolation, and t...

The Soil Ecology section is devoted to the science of, and scientists in, soil ecology to promote a better understanding the world below our feet. Soil ecology is an exciting, dynamic field with incredibly interesting organisms, interactions and implications for society. Societies and sections are more important than ever in an information-saturate...

Background In the face of climate change, shifts in genetic structure and composition of terrestrial plant species are occurring worldwide. Because different genotypes of these plant species support different soil biota and soil processes, shifts in genetics are likely to have cascading effects on ecosystems. Scope We explore plant genetic effects...

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function has received a great deal of attention in ecological research and recent results, from re-analyses, suggest that ecosystem function improves with increases in phylogenetic diversity. However, many of these results have been generalized across a range of different species and clades, and p...

Both abiotic and biotic gradients exist in soils, and several of these gradients have been shown to select for plant traits. Moreover, plants possess a multitude of traits that can lead to strong niche construction (i.e. plant‐induced changes to soils). Our objectives in this paper are to outline both empirical and theoretical evidence for the evol...

Predicting the response of communities and ecosystems to range shifts as a consequence of global climate change is a critical challenge confronting modern evolutionary ecologists. Indirect genetic effects ( IGE s) occur when the expression of genes in a conspecific neighbouring species affects the phenotype of a focal species, and the same concept...

Pollinators serve critical roles for the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, and have an estimated annual value of over $150 billion for global agriculture. Mounting evidence from agricultural systems reveals that pollinators are declining in many regions of the world, and with a lack of information on whether pollinator communities in natural s...

Plant species influence belowground communities in a variety of ways, ultimately impacting nutrient cycling. Functional plant traits provide a means whereby species identity can influence belowground community interactions, but little work has examined whether species identity influences belowground community processes when correcting for evolution...

Background/Question/Methods Biodiversity is fundamental to ecosystem services, and ecosystem function generally improves with increasing species richness. The most common explanations for the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function are driven by plant traits; this suggests that evolutionary history, which generates trait diversit...

Background/Question/Methods Anthropogenic changes to the global climate are affecting broad taxonomic groups in diverse biomes. Predictions indicate that plants will experience climate-induced redistributions to their geographic ranges, moving to higher elevations and latitudes. Previous work highlights the importance of geographic boundaries, il...

Background/Question/Methods Genetic-based plant-soil feedbacks contribute to the expanding field of eco-evo dynamics and improve our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary consequences of changing species ranges. Plant-soil feedbacks may promote the ability of soils to be agents of selection, thus possibly promoting evolutionary response...

Above- and belowground linkages commonly occur across scales of space, time and species and have important implications for a host of ecological phenomena. A little-appreciated approach, however, is to consider their evolutionary consequences. Recent empirical and theoretical work indicates that above- and belowground linkages between plants and so...

The role of plant intraspecific variation in plant-soil linkages is poorly understood, especially in the context of natural environmental variation, but has important implications in evolutionary ecology. We utilized three 18- to 21-year-old common gardens across an elevational gradient, planted with replicates of five Populus angustifolia genotype...

Intraspecific genetic variation can affect decomposition, nutrient cycling, and interactions between plants and their associated belowground communities. However, the effects of genetic variation on ecosystems can also be indirect, meaning that genes in a focal plant may affect ecosystems by altering the phenotype of interacting (i.e., neighboring)...

To what extent microbial community composition can explain variability in ecosystem processes remains an open question in ecology. Microbial decomposer communities can change during litter decomposition due to biotic interactions and shifting substrate availability. Though relative abundance of decomposers may change due to mixing leaf litter, link...

In a rapidly changing biosphere, approaches to understanding the ecology and evolution of forest species will be critical to predict and mitigate the effects of anthropogenic global change on forest ecosystems. Utilizing 26 forest species in a factorial experiment with two levels each of atmospheric CO2 and soil nitrogen, we examined the hypothesis...

AimsIn this study, we examine two common invasion biology hypotheses - biotic resistance and fluctuating resource availability - to explain the patterns of invasion of an invasive grass, Microstegium vimineum.Methods We used 13-year-old deer exclosures in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA, to examine how chronic disturbance by deer browsing...