Improving coastal ecosystem resiliency and wetland restoration by leveraging heritable trait variation in populations

Abstract
Environmental factors are rapidly changing ecosystems across successive levels of biological organization: from genes to ecosystem functioning. Evidence from research I have conducted has shown that environmental factors are strong selective agents capable of altering
intraspecific genetic variation (the number of genotypes at a location), genetic identity (which genotypes are present at a location), and functional traits in foundation plant species that result in changes in ecosystem function.

I propose to leverage an established common garden of pedigreed F1 genotypes of the model organism Phragmites australis at Bryn Mawr College created to evaluate the contribution of heritable trait variation on ecosystem processes that contribute to coastal marsh resilience. The proposed work will help advance evidence-based ecosystem restoration strategies for creating and maintaining resilient coastal ecosystems.

Importantly, this study does not focus on the planting or use of Phragmites for ecosystem restoration. Rather, the aim is to leverage existing resources and infrastructure from ongoing research to derive new insights on the heritability of traits that can regulate marsh responses to a changing environment. Achieving this goal will yield a generalizable framework and strategies for improving coastal restoration and resilience.