Standing dead trees on an eroded beach represent a form of biotic legacy. Photo credit: John Porter, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Credit: John Porter/VCR LTER. CC BY-SA 4.0
While there is widespread appreciation that abiotic/climate legacies strongly influence community assembly and ecosystem resilience, there is emerging evidence that another type of legacy—structural and resource remnants left by organisms—may exert as strong or stronger effects. The remnants of foundation species (e.g., dead trees, corals, oysters, and grasses) are likely highly influential, as these abundant organisms can leave behind pervasive legacies after they die. We are beginning to piece together the importance of these effects in specific ecosystems (e.g., coral reefs, grasslands, forests), but how and why these effects vary among ecosystem types remains largely unexplored. Leveraging the LTER network, we will explore how material legacies of dead foundation species affect the demography of their living counterparts across a range of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, spanning the tropics to the Arctic Circle. We aim to:
- harmonize 11 LTER datasets to evaluate variation in the magnitude and direction of material legacy effects on demographic processes in living foundation species;
- explore temporal dynamics in legacy inputs and residence times that may explain variation in legacy effects and reveal generalizable rules across ecosystems; and
- create a widely usable, derived dataset to guide further research and management applications.
