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theses

Functional trait variation among individuals has become a fundamental component to understand how populations respond to spatiotemporal variation in the environment. Traits respond to varying environmental conditions and can influence ecosystem function. Among these functional traits, the elemental composition of living organisms (e.g., carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) relates and responds to its environment, playing fundamental roles in shaping population and community structure, and biogeochemical processes. Here we studied how multiple single elemental traits and functional trait hypervolumes respond to environmental drivers (e.g. pH, water capacity, habitat size, water temperature, and dissolved oxygen). To do this, we sampled populations of pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea) across a geographical gradient in New Jersey. We found that the bogs of New Jersey showed significant variation in environments but that environmental drivers were not strong predictors of trait variation. Variance for most elemental traits was higher within than among populations. Hypervolume niche size varied across populations but also displayed relatively large overlap and short centroid distances between populations. We found that environmental drivers influence hypervolume size with larger hypervolumes in sites that display more heterogeneity in environmental conditions. We also found larger trait niche overlaps among environmentally similar sites. Overall, we found that variation in environmental conditions drive changes in functional trait values at the individual and population level and thus affected trait diversity and trait hypervolumes of pitcher plants. This study can help understand how trait variation may respond to environmental changes and affect the structure and functioning of ecological populations.

ETD_10988

M.S.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-6hkk-yx47

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.