Range-Shift Simulations & Plant Community Change: Nyika’s Poster at GREEBS 2025
At this year’s Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists & Evolutionary Biologists Meeting (GREEBS) meeting, Nyika Campbell presented a poster on exploring how range shift simulation in the Ecuadorian Andes is influencing plant community composition.
Nyika’s poster, titled Range-Shift Simulations Indicate Early Signs of Plant Community Change, synthesized new data from the Ecuador turf transplant experiment highlighting early shifts in plant community composition in response to manipulative warming elevation change.
Check out the poster and abstract below to explore this project:
Abstract
As a changing climate warms alpine regions around the globe, many plant communities are experiencing range shifts toward higher elevation habitats. These shifts are likely to alter community composition, mediated both by abiotic factors in the local environment and by biotic interactions within the community. While some research has examined these dynamics in temperate alpine regions, tropical alpine or páramo systems may respond differently, in part due to longer and wetter growing seasons.
Since 2023 we’ve investigated these patterns by simulating range shifts using a combination of open-top chambers (OTC, i.e., passive warming experiments), turf transplants, and biomass removal treatments across an elevational gradient in the Ecuadorian Andes, specifically on the Pichincha Volcanic Complex. After three sampling seasons our preliminary results examine whether tropical alpine plant communities are responsive to short-term temperature manipulations.
In this poster, we explore how community composition has shifted over two years of treatments and whether these changes differ significantly among treatment levels. We also assess which plant families drive these changes and discuss the possible implications for alpine communities experiencing upward range shifts under continued climatic warming. These findings will allow us to better predict community composition under a changing climate and can inform effective restoration practices promoting biodiversity and supporting critical ecosystem services in the region.
Nyika Campbell’s GREEBS 2025 Poster
About the Lab
We study how human impacts affect ecosystems from a plot to a landscape to a global perspective. Many things can be anthropogenic impacts, including climate change, land use change, even ecological restoration. Our goal is to merge theoretical science to applied science, including working with indigenous and local communities, land managers, non-governmental organizations, and more.
