Kate S. Boersma

Research

Teaching

Publications

CV

Naturally fragmented habitats such as ponds and intermittent streams are ideal laboratories for testing ecological hypotheses of how biological communities change through space and time. I use macroinvertebrate communities in fragmented aquatic habitats of the western United States as a model system to explore the ecological and evolutionary drivers of observed species distributions. I employ a combination of field observations, manipulative experiments and novel theoretical approaches to address my research questions.

Topics of special interest include:

1. Resistance and resilience of communities following perturbations
2. Evolutionary adaptations of aquatic taxa to extreme droughts
3. Effects of climatic disturbances on intraspecific trait variability

Resistance and resilience of communities following perturbations

Climate change is expected to increase the future occurrence of severe droughts and other extreme climactic events, with potentially devastating effects on ecosystems. However, most research focuses on the impacts of gradually shifting ‘average’ conditions, not extremes. To address this void, I conduct observational and experimental studies in the southwestern US documenting the responses of aquatic invertebrate communities to severe climatic events, specifically the increasing frequency, severity and duration of droughts. I have found that arid-land aquatic communities can withstand and recover from harsh abiotic conditions yet are vulnerable to the indirect effects of the drying process, such as changes to species interactions.

Evolutionary adaptations of aquatic taxa to extreme droughts

I study the remarkable behavioral, morphological, physiological and life history adaptations that allow arid-land aquatic taxa to persist under harsh environmental conditions, such as desiccation resistance and long distance dispersal. Understanding how animals evolved to cope with extreme environments will help us predict the capacity of populations to adapt to future environmental changes.

Effects of disturbance on intraspecific trait variability

Functional traits – characteristics of the biology of an organism that are associated with its functional role – are a useful currency with which to understand community dynamics because they can determine how species respond to the environment and affect ecosystem functioning. Further, communities that have no species in common will share functional traits (e.g., body size), and trait values can be compared among individuals within and among communities. Thus trait analyses may highlight patterns across ecosystems that are not apparent in taxonomic analyses. However, the lack of an appropriate quantitative multivariate framework to apply intraspecific trait measurements limits our capacity to understand how communities may respond an increasingly variable environment. I am working to integrate intraspecific trait variability and selection on phenotypic plasticity into existing quantitative methods and to create novel approaches to understand how suites of correlated traits respond to environmental change.