Marta Jarzyna
Ohio State University, OH·Ecology & Evolution
Where birds live depends on how plants are arranged around them. Habitat structure is the spatial arrangement of plants and resources in a natural community.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
biodiversity
birds
avian diversity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test how three-dimensional vegetation structure, including vertical and horizontal variation, relates to the taxonomic and functional diversity of birds. The work combines bird sighting data with airborne and spaceborne LiDAR.
- Identify bird traits that mediate links between avian diversity and 3-D vegetation structure by analyzing trait-environment relationships. The goal is to find traits that could best predict future diversity under habitat loss.
- Compare relationships between bird diversity and vegetation from local communities up to the continental scale, to test how these relationships depend on spatial scale.
More about the research
It shapes biodiversity, the variety of life in a place, because it affects where organisms can live. Most studies so far have looked at just one feature, tree canopy height, and only over small areas. Real habitats vary both vertically and horizontally, and their effects may change from local communities up to entire continents. This collaborative project tests how three-dimensional (3-D) vegetation structure affects bird diversity across that full range of scales. The goal is to help plan for the future of ecosystems facing human and natural disturbance.
Why it matters
Human activity and natural disturbance are reshaping habitats. This work could show which features of vegetation structure, and which bird traits, most strongly govern bird diversity at different scales. That knowledge could help those planning for the future of ecosystems anticipate how habitat modification and loss will affect bird communities. It could also support predictions of future biodiversity as environments change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Benjamin Zuckerberg
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Test how taxonomic and functional bird diversity relate to 3-D vegetation structure, including vertical and horizontal variation, measured by airborne and spaceborne LiDAR together with bird sighting data.
Erica Stuber
Utah State University, UT·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Characterize the scales of effect, meaning the spatial extents at which species respond to environmental features, for hundreds of North American breeding birds, using multi-scale analyses of a large citizen-science observation database.
Elizabeth LaRue
University of Texas at El Paso, TX·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether higher tree species richness increases belowground biodiversity and thereby promotes complementary use of water and nutrients, using North America's longest-running large-scale forest biodiversity experiment.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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