Diane Thomson
Scripps College, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Forecasting how plant populations will respond to climate change depends on knowing which aspects of weather matter most. Candidates range from yearly averages to short bursts of extreme heat or drought.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Mathematics & Statistics
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
plant demography
population ecology
climate change
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Quantify correlations among weather metrics and test whether they are changing over time, using 17–27-year demographic records of six California Channel Islands plant species and one mainland species.
- Compare alternative statistical models linking weather to survival and reproduction, using AIC-based selection and cross-validation on real data and simulated data with known parameters.
- Build demographic population models for two species and test how the methods used to link vital rates to weather alter predictions under different climate scenarios.
More about the research
Researchers often build statistical models that predict plant survival, growth and reproduction from weather data. Yet weather variables are tangled with one another and with other environmental changes, and the choice of modeling method may change the answer. Few studies have tested how much it does.
Why it matters
Ecologists need reliable ways to forecast how plants will fare as climate shifts. This work will clarify the strengths and limits of methods for modeling weather effects on plant populations, giving researchers practical guidance. It will also identify which climate drivers, such as increased drought, matter most for coastal California plant communities, which could inform their conservation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
William Morris
Duke University, NC·Ecology & Evolution
Build and validate a climate- and fire-driven integral projection model for Venus flytraps, using demographic data from near-factorial manipulations of fire frequency, drought, and warming across longleaf pine savannas.
Thomas Miller
Rice University, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether Epichloë fungi are most beneficial to host grasses in stressful years, using 15–20 years of demographic data from a symbiont-removal experiment across seven grass species.
William Petry
North Carolina State University, NC·Ecology & Evolution
Experimentally amplify natural year-to-year variation in pollination for thousands of tagged perennial plants of two species, using increased, reduced and unmanipulated pollination treatments in a long-term field experiment.
The school
Scripps College: 2 labs on PI Pages.
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