
Samantha J. WorthyUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln | NU · School of Biological Sciences
Samantha J. Worthy
Doctor of Philosophy
Population Biology Program of Excellence (PoE) Postdoctoral Fellow
About
34
Publications
7,688
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310
Citations
Education
August 2016 - May 2021
University of Maryland
Field of study
- Behavior, Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics
August 2014 - May 2016
Columbus State University
Field of study
- Natural Sciences
Publications
Publications (34)
The seasonal timing of life history transitions is often critical to fitness, and many organisms rely upon environmental cues to match life cycle events with favorable conditions. In plants, the timing of seed germination is mediated by seasonal cues such as rainfall and temperature. Variation in cue responses among species can reflect evolutionary...
The timing of early life cycle events has cascading effects on phenology and fitness. These effects may be critical for climate resilience of plant populations, especially in Mediterranean environments, where delayed rainfall onset causes delayed germination. To examine impacts of germination timing on ten species of the Streptanthus/Caulanthus cla...
Ecologists have historically sought to identify the mechanisms underlying the maintenance of local species diversity. High-dimensional trait-based relationships, such as alternative phenotypes, have been hypothesized as important for maintaining species diversity such that phenotypically dissimilar individuals compete less for resources but have si...
Transcriptomics provides a versatile tool for ecological monitoring. Here, through genome-guided profiling of transcripts mapping to 33 042 gene models, expression differences can be discerned among multi-year and seasonal leaf samples collected from American beech trees at two latitudinally separated sites. Despite a bottleneck due to post-Columbi...
Phytochemicals and their ecological significance are long ignored in trait-based ecology. Moreover, the adaptations of phytochemicals produced by fine roots to abiotic and biotic pressures are less understood. Here, we explored the fine roots metabolomes of 315 tree species and their rhizosphere microbiome in southwestern China spanning tropical, s...
BACKGROUND: Plant ecologists have long sought to quantify the drivers of variation in growth, survival, and reproductive output
(Harper and White, 1974). Global studies have had some success in explaining variation in these demographic metrics among species by including functional traits in analyses (Adler et al., 2014). Shifting focus from among t...
Diversity studies via floristic surveys and taxonomic metrics have proven essential for discerning community composition and biodiversity; however, phylogenetic analyses are necessary to reveal potential community assembly patterns. Pitcher plant bogs are highly diverse, understudied habitats that contain many at-risk plant species. This study inve...
The timing of germination, driven by seasonal cues, is critical for the life cycle of plants. Variation among species in germination responses can reflect evolutionary processes and adaptation to local climate and can affect vulnerability to changing conditions. Indeed, climate change is altering the timing of precipitation and associated temperatu...
Researchers have a history of seeking explanation for and understanding of diversity patterns. High-dimensional trait-based trade-offs have been hypothesized as important for maintaining species and functional diversity. These relationships have primarily been investigated at the community-level, despite the importance of intraspecific variation to...
Phytochemicals are greatly ignored in trait-based ecology. Especially, the adaptations of phytochemicals to abiotic and biotic pressures in the rhizosphere are less understood. Here, we measured the metabolomics of fine roots and their rhizosphere microbiome along a climatic gradient (tropical, subtropical, and subalpine forests), to explore phytoc...
Transcriptomics, the quantification of gene expression, provides a versatile tool for ecological monitoring. Here, we show that through genome-guided profiling of transcripts mapping to 33,042 loci, gene expression differences can be discerned among multi-year and seasonal leaf samples collected from American beech trees at two latitudinally separa...
Industrialized sites are hotspots for nonnative species because of continuous anthropogenic disturbance and nonnative propagule rain resulting from hitchhikers exchanged through global trade. Investigating plant traits and the phylogenetic structure of species at initial ports of entry can contribute to our understanding of how species are introduc...
An important mechanism promoting species coexistence is conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD), which inhibits conspecific neighbors by accumulating host-specific enemies near adult trees. Natural enemies may be genotype-specific and regulate offspring dynamics more strongly than non-offspring, which is often neglected due to the difficulty...
Background and Aims
Our understanding of plant responses to biotic and abiotic drivers are largely based on aboveground plant traits, with little focus on belowground traits despite their key role in water and nutrient uptake. Here, we aimed to understand the extent to which above and belowground traits are coordinated, and how these traits respond...
Lianas, climbing woody plants, influence the structure and function of tropical forests. Climbing traits have evolved multiple times, including ancestral groups such as gymnosperms and pteridophytes, but the genetic basis of the liana strategy is largely unknown. Here, we use a comparative transcriptomic approach for 47 tropical plant species, incl...
Orchidaceae is among the largest plant families in the world; that is why it is notoriously difficult to identify species using traditional taxonomic methods. This problem is especially apparent in the Andean region of South America, a global hot-spot for orchid diversity. Plant DNA barcoding has been proposed to help with orchid species discrimina...
The Andean forests of northern Ecuador are known for their high levels of plant diversity relative to the area they occupy. Typically, these forests grow on steep slopes that lead to dramatic habitat gradients across short distances. These extreme habitat gradients make the Andean forest ecosystem an excellent natural laboratory for understanding t...
Large scale disturbances are known to impact the alpha and beta diversity of communities. However, whether these disturbances increase or decrease diversity is often debated. The goal of this study was to quantify how the diversity of the seedling community was impacted within and across elevation in the El Yunque forest of Puerto Rico following a...
Lianas, climbing woody plants, influence the structure and function of tropical forests. Climbing traits have evolved multiple times, including ancestral groups such as gymnosperms and pteridophytes, but the genetic basis of the liana strategy is largely unknown. Here, we use a comparative transcriptomic approach for 47 tropical plant species, incl...
he initial processes for successful biological invasions are transport, introduction, and establishment. These can be directly influenced or completely avoided through activities that reduce the number and frequency of entering nonnative propagules. Economic and environmental benefits through preventative monitoring programs at early stages of inva...
Over 90% of global commercial trade occurs between seaports, which are initial points-of-entry for nonnative, potentially invasive propagules. As such, there is a need to develop means to both rapidly intercept and identify propagules as they arrive. Here, we focus on plant propagules that are assumed to be non-native, in seed form. Because standar...
Humans have created an accelerating, increasingly connected, globalized economy, resulting in a more globalized, shared flora. The prevention of new, establishing species is less costly, both economically and ecologically, and is more manageable than eradicating nonnative invasive species once they are widespread and negatively impactful. We ask if...
The functional trait values that constitute a whole‐plant phenotype interact with the environment to determine demographic rates. Current approaches often fail to explicitly consider trait × trait and trait × environment interactions, which may lead to missed information that is valuable for understanding and predicting the drivers of demographic r...
Disentangling the processes that drive population, community and whole forest structure and dynamics is a challenge. It becomes a grand challenge in the tropics where there are a large number of species, small population sizes, less research infrastructure, and a relatively smaller number of researchers compared to the temperate zone. Tackling this...
The relationship between plant functional traits and demographic performance forms the foundation of trait-based ecology. It also serves as the natural linkage between trait-based ecology and much of evolutionary biology. Despite these important aspects, plant trait–demographic performance relationships reported in the literature are typically weak...
Highlighting patterns of distribution and assembly of plants involves the use of community phylogenetic analyses and complementary traditional taxonomic metrics. However, these patterns are often unknown or in dispute, particularly along elevational gradients, with studies finding different patterns based on elevation. We investigated how patterns...
Aristolochia mishuyacensis is recorded for the first time in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Two specimens were collected in two banks of black water tributaries of the Yasuní river, Yasuní National Park. This species is currently distributed in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, below 200 m. An updated description and images of the species are p...
Investigations of forest community structure and dynamics have been facilitated by the use of neighbourhood models that examine the interactions between a focal tree and its neighbours using a fixed radius. However, different studies have chosen different radii without clear reasons, hampering the understanding of mechanisms structuring tree commun...
Over the past two decades, biodiversity assessments have moved beyond simply measuring species diversity and toward the utilization of phylogenetic information. Despite these major advances toward holistically estimating the similarity of species, challenges remain. Specifically, the large phylogenies utilized for such analyses often contain multip...
Intra‐specific negative density dependence promotes species coexistence by regulating population sizes. Patterns consistent with such density dependence are frequently reported in diverse tropical tree communities. Empirical evidence demonstrating whether intra‐specific variation is related to these patterns, however, is lacking. The present study...
Developing a DNA barcoding pipeline for the identification and
prevention of invasive plant propagules entering the Port of
Savannah
Lauren E. Whitehurst,1 Chelsea Cunard,2 Jarron K. Gravesande,2
Jennifer N. Reed,3 Samantha J. Worthy,1 Travis D. Marsico,3
Rima D. Lucardi,2 and Kevin S. Burgess1
1Department of Biology, Columbus State University, USA...
The structure and dynamics of ecological communities are ultimately the outcome of the differential demographic rates of individuals. Individual growth and mortality rates largely result from the interaction between an organism's phenotype and the abiotic and biotic environment. Functional traits have been used extensively over the past decade to e...