Oral Paper

         Ecology

Latitude and Urbanization, Do They Matter? Investigating Morphological Plant Trait Change in Cities of Eastern North America

Presenting Author
Megan King
Description
The impacts of environmental change on floras has been well documented, however far less is known about how urbanization drives morphological trait adaptation. While studies have used common garden experiments, they most often focus on examining a single species, not entire clades, or functional groups of species. As urbanization continues to rapidly increase, floras are changing around the world, with non-native species filling niches no longer favorable to the native flora. Additionally, recent studies have shown that some non-native species along an urban gradient become taller, demonstrate an increase in specific leaf area (SLA), and leaf production in the most urban environments. In this study, we collected individuals from six different species in nine cities on the eastern seaboard of the United States from Florida to Maine. In each city, we collected specimens within areas of high, medium, and low impervious surface cover for a total of 1,192 specimens. We investigated whether the selected species exhibit morphological change (i.e., plant height, internode length, seed mass) across the urban gradient within each city and across the continental latitudinal gradient. We hypothesize that morphological traits will shift in response to higher impervious surface cover across all cities. We also expect that variation in trait change will be greater in cities at higher latitudes, due to increased average temperature from high to low impervious surface cover.