Sherise Vialva MSc Candidate, Colautti Lab Exploring co-occurrence patterns and the impact of Climate Change on the Competitive Dynamics between Alliaria petiolata and Vincetoxicum rossicum My research looks at the interaction between two invasive plant species, Alliaria petiolata and Vincetoxicum rossicum, and how co-occurrence and competition may be affected by climate change. I conducted a field survey across Southern Ontario to determine if these species naturally co-occur and what environmental conditions possibly lead to one dominating over the other.
The results from the field survey found that both species naturally co-occur, leading me to conduct a field experiment to further investigate their interactions. The objective of this experiment was to examine how climate change may affect the interactions between Alliaria petiolata and Vincetoxicum rossicum. And to determine how this change could impact the abundance of both species, as well as their ability to spread in the future. My results suggest that climate warming may increase the fitness for both species, which may lead to greater spread and abundance in the future. However, this benefit from warming appears to be greater for each species when they are grown alone rather than together. This suggests that the presence of one species negatively affects the other. More research is needed to understand how these interactions will impact native plant communities. And on developing management strategies to better control the future spread of both species in a warmer climate. Comments are closed.
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