Anna and Jonathan publish a paper in Ecosphere titled “Pawpaws prevent predictability: A locally-dominant tree alters understory beta-diversity and community assembly.”
Figure: Sampling design within the Tyson Research Center Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) Plot, Missouri. (a) Abiotic conditions (soil resources and topography) represented by the first axis of a principal components analysis (PCA) including 17 environmental variables at the 10 × 10-m scale (Appendix S1: Figure S2), mapped locations of all pawpaw stems ≥1 cm in dbh, and selected sampling blocks. Blue values represent areas of lower elevation, higher soil nutrient availability, and higher soil pH, whereas red values represent higher elevation, lower nutrient availability, and more acidic soils. (b) For each block, the pawpaw patch edge was defined and five 1 × 1-m plots were placed inside or outside the patch. Gray arrows represent how beta-diversity was calculated within each of the two patch types (inside and outside plots). (c) Each block is shown enlarged to illustrate the environmental conditions and relative location for both the inside patches and outside patches.