PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #63: Late Breaking and Newsworthy Papers.
Friday, August 9. Presentation from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC
5
Variation in species composition of Sarracenia purpurea inquiline communities; from within-leaf to continental scales.
Buckley, Hannah*,1, Miller, Thomas1, Ellison, Aaron2, Gotelli, Nicholas3, 1 Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL2 Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Petersham, MA3 University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
ABSTRACT- We studied compositional variation in the community of invertebrates, protozoa, and bacteria that inhabits the water-filled leaves of the carnivorous purple pitcher plant Sarracenia purpurea L. The host plant is a carnivorous perennial herb that is widely distributed across low-nutrient North American wetlands: its range spans 30 degrees of latitude and 70 degrees of longitude from the Florida panhandle up the east coast to Labrador and across to British Columbia in Canada. Twenty pitchers on individual plants were sampled at each of 39 sites across North America. Environmental variables were also recorded at three scales: site (latitude, longitude, elevation, long term temperature and precipitation data, and soil chemical characteristics), plant (number of leaves with and without water, flowering status, rosette diameter, and structure of surrounding vegetation), and pitcher (age, mouth size, height of aperture from the ground, pitcher size, and amount of fluid). We find that variation in species composition at the geographic, among-site scale is low relative to variation at the within-site (among-pitcher) scale. Among-site scale compositional variation was well explained by geographic variation and variation in climatic conditions. Among-pitcher scale compositional variation was best explained by among-site variation. These results show that small-scale compositional variation does not necessarily translate to variation at larger scales. The comparison of patterns in species composition at multiple spatial scales allows us to generate new hypotheses of mechanisms determining community structure.
KEY WORDS: community ecology, Sarracenia purpurea, scale