The Role of Primary Producer Traits in Moderating Community Structure and Ecosystem Function

Primary producers, from algae to trees, play a pivotal role in community structure and ecosystem function. Primary producers vary broadly in their functional traits (i.e., morphological, physiological, biochemical, and behavioral characteristics), which determine how they respond to stimuli and affect ecosystem properties. Functional traits provide a mechanistic link between environmental conditions, community structure, and ecosystem function. With climate change altering environmental conditions, understanding this mechanistic link is essential for predicting future community structure and ecosystem function. Competitive interactions and trait values in primary producers are often context dependent, whereby changes in environmental conditions and resources alter relationships between species and ecosystem processes. Well-established paradigms concerning how species in a community respond to each other and to environmental conditions may need to be re-evaluated in light of these environmental changes, particularly in highly variable systems. In this dissertation, I examine the role of primary producer functional traits on community structure and ecosystem function. Specifically, I test a conceptual framework that incorporates response traits, effect traits, and their interaction, in affecting primary producer communities and ecosystem function across different aquatic systems. First, I identified species-specific responses to intensifying hydrologic stressors important in controlling wetland plant community composition over time in an aridland stream. Second, I found that effect traits of submerged and emergent vegetation explained differences in ecosystem metabolism and carbon dynamics among permafrost mire thaw ponds. Next, I examined response-effect trait interactions by comparing two dominant wetland plant species over a water-stress gradient, finding that responses to changes in hydrology (i.e., altered tissue chemistry) in turn affect ecosystem processes (i.e., subsurface CO2 concentration). Finally, I demonstrate how indirect effects of diatom functional traits on water chemistry and ecosystem metabolism help explain disconnects between resource availability and productivity in the Colorado River. By expanding my understanding of how metabolic processes and carbon cycling in aquatic ecosystems vary across gradients in hydrology, vegetation, and organic matter, I contributed to my understanding of how communities influence ecosystem processes. A response-effect trait approach to understanding communities and ecosystems undergoing change may aid in predicting and mitigating the repercussions of future climate change.