Amy Zanne visits CMEC
Amy Zannee, Associate Professor at George Washington University in the USA visits CMEC for the next three months.
Her research group Zanne lab explores why and how plant community composition changes across ecological settings and what the ecosystem-level consequences are of these changes. Their focus is typically not at the species but at the trait composition level, as selection will be acting within and among species via their expressed functional traits. They ask whether particular plant traits or suites of traits lead to differences in plant distribution and performance to understand the linkage between structure and function. Additionally, they examine these linkages within an evolutionary framework, investigating where in phylogenies the greatest divergences in trait values occur, as well as whether traits change in a coordinated fashion across phylogenies.