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CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Dissertation
USING FUNCTIONAL DISTANCE FOR SELECTION OF SPECIES IN INVASION-RESISTANT WILDFLOWER SEED MIXES
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2022
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000004384
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/122789
Abstract
Landscape designers seek ways to create more diverse, self-sustaining gardens over the long term. Herein I review functional ecology theory as it applies to this task, in a way that is accessible to horticultural scientists, landscape architects, and other disciplines outside of ecology involved in restoration and conservation practices. To showcase how such theory can be applied for restoration, a case study was conducted analyzing South Sound Prairie ecosystems in terms of their functional composition over time. Through this study, functional trade-offs were discovered which can be used to explain the historical extirpation of native ruderal species from these endangered systems. In addition, these theoretical concepts were used to develop a framework to describe the biomass investments into adaptations that increase plant survivability within their environment by using the concepts of functional direction and distance to manipulate community assembly through selective species introduction. To showcase how this framework could be applied, I conducted a field study using wildflower seed mixes surrounded by a weed field, where weeds were allowed to freely invade over two seasons. The mixes became heavily invaded by weeds due in part to low sowing density. Persistence of established sown wildflowers was high, therefore the accuracy of functional state forecasting, the basis for wildflower species selection, was inconclusive. Although this study does not verify the efficacy of this framework in producing plantings of greater invasion resistance, it does provide a method for detecting niche partitions, which is a step in the process of designing invasion-resistant plant communities.
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Details
- Title
- USING FUNCTIONAL DISTANCE FOR SELECTION OF SPECIES IN INVASION-RESISTANT WILDFLOWER SEED MIXES
- Creators
- Alejandra Feliciano
- Contributors
- Linda K Chalker-Scott (Advisor)Matthew D Whiting (Committee Member)Amit Dhingra (Committee Member)Kenneth P Yocom (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Horticulture, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 172
- Identifiers
- OCLC#: 1365390730; 99900883135801842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation