Kara A. Moore, Post-Doctoral Researcher
The focus of my research is to understand what determines species' distributions at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Both edaphic tolerance and interactions with other species can affect plant fitness, with cascading effects on population abundance, density, and landscape diversity patterns. Recently, my experimental work with Sarah Elmendorf and Susan Harrison has focused on understanding the effects of propagule limitation and interspecific competition on non-serpentine and serpentine grassland plant communities in the Coast Range of California. A better understanding of species distributions, species spread, and their drivers can assist the development of conservation and restoration plans. I am particularly interested in how temporal variation in weather affects distributions and diversity patterns on multiple spatial scales and on large scale distributional processes such as niche evolution.
With Susan Harrison and Mark Schwartz, I am working on a project to compare the climatic tolerance of serpentine endemic taxa versus their non-endemic congeners across the California Floristic Province. Our work will contribute to understanding the evolution of serpentine tolerance, and to predicting the effects of climate change on endemic and rare California species.
I am also currently working with Maureen Stanton on the local scale distributional constraints on patchy native annual plant species Gilia tricolor and Lupinus nanus. Patchy populations present excellent opportunities to examine constraints on populations over short spatial scales. We are interested in developing simulations models to determine how different life history and distributional constraints lead to spatial stable, versus spatially fluctuating, populations. We are also continuing a study to investigate evidence for local adaptation within Gilia patches.
I have also recently begun study of twelve rare and endemic plant species at Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Together with Bruce Pavlik of Mills College and David Turner at Utah State University, I will be exploring reproductive biology of these species in order to inform conservation planning. Among other objectives, our research will address the role of pollinator limitation in fitness, population viability, and how reproductive fitness is affected by the spatial configuration of both plant populations and pollinator communities.