Diez Ecology Lab
Population and Community Ecology
We are a research group in the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Oregon studying what controls the distributions of species and composition of communities in forest and grassland ecosystems. This work has become more challenging and more urgent in this era of rapid global changes. Species distributions and phenologies (timing) are reshuffling due to species-specific responses to changing climate and human-mediated movements of species. We use these changes as natural experiments to ask basic questions about what processes shape ecological communities while also building capacity for forecasting change in the coming decades. What are the causes of this reshuffling and what are the implications for the ecological communities that people have come to know and rely on? We use field experiments, greenhouse experiments, theory, and demographic and statistical modeling that can test hypotheses and quantify processes at different spatial and temporal scales
Research
General topics of interest:
- how global change alters species distributions, interactions, species coexistence and community composition
- designing restoration efforts to build future resilience
- causes and consequences of species invasions
- phenology and climate change
- plant-soil feedbacks
- source-sink population dynamics
Current work in the lab is focused on these questions:
How is climate change causing phenological reshuffling, and how does this influence species interactions and coexistence?
Changes in phenology (the timing of life cycle events such as bud burst, insect emergence, bird migration, etc.) have been important early indicators of climate change. The effects of shifting phenology may cascade through ecological levels, from altered physiology and performance of individuals, to population dynamics, to community interactions and ecosystem processes. We are using a combination of field studies, common garden experiments, and historical databases to ask how phenological changes influence species interactions, population dynamics, and species coexistence.
How do interactions between plant species and fungi and bacteria (above- and below-ground) impact plant fitness, species interactions, and coexistence?
How are fungi responding to changing climate, and what factors control the distributions of fungal species at local to continental scales?
Fungi play important roles in ecosystems and have ubiquitous and intimate interactions with plants. Despite their important roles, we know very little about how fungi are responding to climate change. In collaboration with Håvard Kauserud & ClimFun team , we’re using datasets from North America and collaborating on a Europe-wide project aiming to build an understanding of how fungi are responding to climate change.
Also, in a new collaborative NSF grant with Bitty Roy we are exploring what factors control the distributions of fungal species at local to continental scales in North America.
How will forest demography (trees and understories) change with increased climate variability?
The Pacific Slope (California, Oregon, Washington) is a great place to do ecological research because of its many strong environmental gradients. We have been studying plant demography across elevation gradients that vary in temperature and available moisture in order to test how climate and biotic interactions combine to affect species distributions and coexistence.
Our work in forest demography uses publicly available forests inventory data as well as field-collected data. We take part in research at the famous and lovely H.J. Andrews LTER , just an hour east of Eugene.
Our overarching question is: How do species' demographic performance depend on broad climate gradients, landscape disturbances, and local species interactions?
Will rapid evolution potentially rescue species from climate change?
Adaptive evolution is a key means for populations to persist under environmental change. Yet, whether populations can adapt quickly enough to keep up with the rapid pace of changing climate remains largely unknown.
In collaboration with Seema Sheth , we integrate evolutionary approaches with population models to investigate whether evolution can rescue populations from decline under environmental change. Specifically, we are performing a resurrection study comparing ancestors and descendants derived from seed of the native perennial herb, Mimulus cardinalis, collected before and after a severe drought and heat wave in western North America.
We will transplant seedlings from leading-edge, central, and trailing-edge populations into three common gardens at differing range positions and quantify natural selection on traits, additive genetic variances for traits and fitness, and differences in population growth rates and traits between ancestors and descendants.
About Us
Please see our lab mission statement and lab expectations documents for more context about how we strive to operate. These are living documents, to be reviewed and modified regularly by lab members.
Current Lab Members
Jeff Diez
Principle Investigator, Associate Professor
PhD., Ecology, Institute of Ecology, Athens, GA B.A., M.A. Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Before arriving at the University of Oregon, Jeff became an assistant professor at UC Riverside in 2014 after postdoc positions at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, working with Jonathan Levine, at the University of Michigan, working with Inés Ibánez, and in New Zealand working with Richard Duncan and Phil Hulme. Publications on google scholar
Sarah Erskine
PhD Candidate
B.S., Environmental Science, Biology Minor, University of Vermont Sarah researches plant phenology, interactions, and coexistence in a changing climate.
Jeremy Collings
PhD Student
B.S., Conservation Biology, State University of New York at Cortland
Jeremy researches the role of plant-microbe interactions in mediating plant community dynamics. He loves pretty flowers, soil microbes, and ecological theory. In his off time, he enjoys drumming and reading queer theory.
Emily Cook
PhD Candidate
B.S., Environmental Science, B.S. Spatial Data Science in Technology, University of Oregon
Emily is interested in how species interactions, traits, and community composition are affected by climate change, and exploring the complexities of how biodiversity is maintained.
Katelin Kutella
Lab Manager, Research Assistant
B.S., Environmental Science & Policy, Biology minor, Southern Oregon University
Katelin helps design, implement, and manage the methods & data collection of multiple projects within the Diez Lab. Outside of work, she enjoys trail running, camping, botanizing for rare plants, collecting natural history guides, and doing puzzles.
Austyn Tavernier
Undergraduate Researcher, McNair Scholar
Austyn is pursing a B.S. in Environmental Science with minors in Geography and Landscape Architecture. He is currently working on a thesis project testing the effects of mycorrhizae on plant competition during droughts. In his free time, Austyn enjoys camping and visiting National Parks.
Fledged the nest; graduated and gone but not forgotten...
Macy Patel
Undergraduate Researcher
Macy is a third-year undergraduate pursuing a B.S. in Environmental Studies with minors in Biology and Planning, Public Policy, and Management. She is currently working on a thesis project looking at plant competition of legumes and non-legumes and how this is dependent on both rhizobia and nitrogen presence. Her favorite part of working in the lab is spending time with her coworkers in the greenhouse! When she is not in class or in the lab, she loves to cook, read, crochet, and try new coffee shops!
Olivia Wilborn-Pilotte
Undergraduate Researcher
Olivia is a Biology major and Spanish minor with a concentration in ecology and conservation. Before joining the Diez Lab this year, she spent a field season helping with projects in the H.J. Andrews LTER. Outside of school and working in the lab, she loves to read, cook, watch movies, and explore new nature spots.
Bryn Callie
Undergraduate Researcher
Bryn is majoring in environmental science and anthropology and minoring in biology and geography. During the summer of 2022, they worked as a field technician at H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. When not spending time in the forest or looking at plants, they enjoy exploring museums, reading, running, and making art.
Anna Easton
Undergraduate Researcher
Anna is a Biology Major with an Ecology & Evolution focus in the Clark Honors College. Her career goals include conducting research and helping people learn about biology. Her research interests are native prairie flowers, germination, adaptations to climate change, and much more – she will be doing her senior thesis project during the 23-24 school year. She also enjoys crocheting, painting, cats, coffee, plants, mushrooms, and bugs.
Julia Prange
Undergraduate Researcher
Julia majored in biology with a minor in chemistry and an emphasis in ecology and evolution. She spent time in Ecuador over the summer exploring different ecosystems and conducted a research project focused on epiphytes in the Amazon Basin. In her free time, she loves to spend time outside hiking and skiing, as well as baking and puzzling!
Lindsay Villano
Undergraduate Researcher
Lindsay was an Environmental Science major and Biology minor interested in ecology, conservation, and plant-soil interactions. She did her thesis project on the variation in root traits such as the associations of roots with mycorrhizal fungi. One summer she worked on H.J. Andrews projects and loved working and living in the forest, although she believes greenhouse work can be just as fun! She hopes to do more exciting field and lab work like this in the future. She was also a critically valuable member of the PERSIST team!
University of Oregon:
Ella Bloom, Sally Thompson, Emma Freedman, Melissa Milbrandt
University of California, Riverside:
Teresa Bohner, PhD. (graduated UCR 2020), Courtney Collins, PhD. (graduated UCR 2019), Jolene Saldivar, PhD. (UCR 2019 - Rankin Lab), Soren Weber, MS. (graduated UCR 2017)
Undergraduate researchers: Rohan Boone, ...
Publications
In review / in press
Collings, J. A., L. G. Shoemaker, J. M. Diez. Environmental context may alter plant-soil feedback effects on plant coexistence. (in review).
2024
Collings, J. A., Cook, E. J., Delevich, C. A., & Diez, J. M. (2024). Soil mycobiome dissimilarity, independent of fungal guild, is associated with increased probability of plant coexistence. Journal of Ecology, 00, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14396
Diez, J., Schlauch, J., DuCharme, E., Collings, J., & Erskine, S. (2024). Germination phenology alters species coexistence outcomes. Journal of Ecology, 00, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14382
2023
Beaury, E. M., Sofaer, H. R., Early, R., Pearse, I. S., Blumenthal, D. M., Corbin, J. D., Diez, J., Dukes, J. S., Barnett, D. T., Ibáñez, I., Petri, L., Vilà, M., & Bradley, B. A. (2023). Macroscale analyses suggest invasive plant impacts depend more on the composition of invading plants than on environmental context. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 32, 1964–1976. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13749
Ramachandran, A., Huxley, J. D., McFaul, S., Schauer, L., Diez, J., Boone, R., Madsen-Hepp, T., McCann, E., Franklin, J., Logan, D., Rose, M. B., & Spasojevic, M. J. (2023). Integrating ontogeny and ontogenetic dependency into community assembly. Journal of Ecology, 111, 1561–1574. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14132
Ibáñez, Inés, Petri, Laís, Barnett, David T., Beaury, Evelyn M., Blumenthal, Dana M., Corbin, Jeffrey D., Diez, Jeffrey, et al. (2023) Combining Local, Landscape, and Regional Geographies to Assess Plant Community Vulnerability to Invasion Impact.. Ecological Applications 33(4): e2821. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2821
Collins, C.G., Spasojevic, M.J., Pombubpa, N. et al. Legacy effects post removal of a range-expanding shrub influence soil fungal communities and create negative plant-soil feedbacks for conspecific seedlings. Plant Soil 485, 143–165 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-05896-w
2022
Bässler, C., Heilmann-Clausen, J., Andrew, C., Boddy, L., Büntgen, U., Diez, J., Heegaard, E., Egli, S., Gange, A.C., Halvorsen, R., Kauserud, H., Kirk, P.M., Krisai-Greilhuber, I., Kuyper, T.W., Nordén, J., Senn-Irlet, B. and Krah, F.-S. (2022), European mushroom assemblages are phylogenetically structured by temperature. Ecography, 2022: e06206. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.06206
Qin, Z., JE Zhang, A DiTommaso, JM Diez, Y Zhao, FG Wang. (2022) Predicting the Potential Distribution of Three Allergenic Invasive Ambrosia (Ragweed) Species in Asia. Journal of Environmental Informatics 39 (1) 1
2021
Bohner, T. and J Diez. (2021) Tree resistance and recovery from drought mediated by multiple abiotic and biotic processes across a large geographic gradient. Science of The Total Environment 789, 147744. pdf
Diez, J.M., R. Boone, T. Bohner, O. Godoy. (2021) Frequency-dependent tree performance depends on climate. Ecology. 102(4):e03284.
Diez, J.M., R. Boone, T. Bohner, O. Godoy. (2021) Frequency-dependent tree performance depends on climate. Ecology. 102(4):e03284. pdf
Camarero, J.J., Gazol, A., Sánchez-Salguero, R., Fajardo, A., McIntire, E.J.B., Gutiérrez, E., Batllori, E., Boudreau, S., Carrer, M., Diez, J., Dufour-Tremblay, G., Gaire, N.P., Hofgaard, A., Jomelli, V., Kirdyanov, A.V., Lévesque, E., Liang, E., Linares, J.C., Mathisen, I.E., Moiseev, P.A., Sangüesa-Barreda, G., Shrestha, K.B., Toivonen, J.M., Tutubalina, O.V. and Wilmking, M. (2021), Global fading of the temperature–growth coupling at alpine and polar treelines. Global Change Biology, 27: 1879-1889. pdf
Reinhart, KO, Bauer, JT, McCarthy-Neumann, S, et al. Globally, plant-soil feedbacks are weak predictors of plant abundance. Ecol Evol. 2021; 11: 1756– 1768. pdf
2020
Collins, C., Spasojevic, M., Alados, C., Aronson, E., Benavides, J., Cannone, N., Caviezel, C., Grau, O., Guo, H., Kudo, G., Kuhn, N., Müllerová, J., Phillips, M., Pombubpa, N., Reverchon, F., Shulman, H., Stajich, J., Stokes, A., Weber, S., Diez, J. (2020) Belowground Impacts of Alpine Woody Encroachment are determined by Plant Traits, Local Climate and Soil Conditions. Global Change Biology
Yan, X., Diez, J., Huang, K., Li, S., Luo, X., Xu, X., Su, F., Jiang, L., Guo, H., Hu, S. (2020). Beyond resource limitation: an expanded test of the niche dimension hypothesis for multiple types of niche axes Oecologia. 193(3), 689-699.
Diez, J., Kauserud, H., Andrew, C., Heegaard, E., Krisai-Greilhuber, I., Senn-Irlet, B., Høiland, K., Egli, S., Büntgen, U. (2020). Altitudinal upwards shifts in fungal fruiting in the Alps Proceedings of the Royal Society B 287(1919).
S. R. Brown, A. Baysinger, P. M. Brown, J. L. Cheek, J. M. Diez, C. M. Gentry, T. A. Grant, H. D. Grissino-Mayer, J. St. Jacques, D. A. Jordan, M. L. Leef, M. K. Rourke, J. H. Speer, C. E. Spradlin, - J. T. Stevens, J. R. Stone, B. Van Winkle, and N. E. Zeibig-Kichas. (2020) Fire history across forest types in the southern Beartooth Mountains, Wyoming. Tree-Ring Research 76 (1): 27–39.
Rafferty, N., J. Diez, D. Bertelsen. (2020) Changing climate drives divergent and nonlinear shifts in flowering phenology across elevations. Current Biology. 30(3), 432-441
Bohner, T., Diez, J. (2020). Extensive mismatches between species distributions and performance and their relationship to functional traits. Ecology Letters 23(1), 33-44.
2019
Collins, C., Bohner, T. & Diez, J. (2019). Plant-soil feedbacks and facilitation influence the demography of herbaceous alpine species in response to woody plant range expansion. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7, 417.
Krah, F.-S., Büntgen, U., Schaefer, H., Müller, J., Andrew, C., Boddy, L., J.M. Diez, et al. (2019). European mushroom assemblages are darker in cold climates. Nature Communications, 10, 2890.
Bradley, B. A., B. Laginhas, R. Whitlock, A.E. Bates, G. Bernatchez, J.M. Diez, J. M. Allen, R.Early, J. Lenoir, M. Vilà, C.J.B. Sorte. (2019) Disentangling the abundance-impact relationship for invasive species. PNAS, 116, 9919–9924.
Xu, X., L. Wolfe, J. Diez, Y. Zheng, H. Guo, S. Hu. (2019) Differential germination strategies of native and introduced populations of the invasive species Plantago virginica. Neobiota. 43: 101–118
Peterson, A.T., Anderson, R.P., Beger, M., Bolliger, J., Brotons, L., Burridge, C.P., et al. (2019). Open access solutions for biodiversity journals: Do not replace one problem with another. Divers. Distrib., 25, 5–8.
Andrew, C., J. Diez, T.Y. James and H. Kauserud. (2019) Fungarium specimens - a largely untapped source in global change biology and beyond. Philosophical Transactions Roy. Soc. B. 374, 20170392.
Weber, S.E., Diez, J.M., Andrews, L.V., Goulden, M.L., Aronson, E.L. & Allen, M.F. (2019). Responses of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to multiple coinciding global change drivers. Fungal Ecology, 40, 62–71.
2018
Collins, C.G., Stajich, J.E., Weber, S.E., Pombubpa, N. & Diez, J.M. (2018). Shrub range expansion alters diversity and distribution of soil fungal communities across an alpine elevation gradient. Molecular Ecology, 27, 2461–2476.
Alexander, J.M., Diez, J. M., Usinowicz, J., Hart, S.P. (2018). Species' distributions as a coexistence problem: a reply to Godsoe et al.. Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
2017
Gange, A. C., Heegaard, E., Boddy, L., Andrew, C., Kirk, P., Halvorsen, R., Kuyper, T. W., Bässler, C., Diez, J., Heilman-Clausen, J., Høiland, K., Büntgen, U. and Kauserud, H. (2017), Trait-dependent distributional shifts in fruiting of common British fungi. Ecography 41(1), 51-61.
Andrew, C., Heegaard, E., Kirk, P. M., Bässler, C., Heilmann-Clausen, J., Krisai-Greilhuber, I., et al. (2017). Big data integration: Pan-European fungal species observations' assembly for addressing contemporary questions in ecology and global change biology. Fungal Biology Reviews, 31(2), 1–11.
2016
Alexander, J. M., Diez, J. M., Hart, S. P., & Levine, J. M. 2016. When Climate Reshuffles Competitors: A Call for Experimental Macroecology. Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Heegaard, E., L. Boddy, J.M. Diez, R. Halvorsen, H. Kauserud, T. W. Kuyper, C. Bässler, U. Büntgen, A. C. Gange, I. Krisai-Greilhuber, C. J. Andrew, F. Ayer, K. Høiland, P. Kirk, S. Egli. (2016) Fine-scale spatiotemporal dynamics of fungal fruiting: prevalence, amplitude, range and continuity. Ecography.
Collins, C.G., C.J. Carey, E.L. Aronson, C.W. Kopp, J. M. Diez. (2016) Direct and indirect effects of native range expansion on soil microbial community structure and function. Journal of Ecology.
Elmendorf, S. C., K. D. Jones, B. I. Cook, J. M. Diez, C. A. F. Enquist, R. A. Hufft, M. O. Jones, S. J. Mazer, A. J. Miller-Rushing, D. J. P. Moore, M. D. Schwartz, and J. F. Weltzin. (2016) The plant phenology monitoring design for The National Ecological Observatory Network. Ecosphere 7(4).
2015
Alexander, J.M., J.M. Diez, J.M., J.M. Levine. (2015) Novel competitors shape species' responses to climate change. Nature 525, 515–518.
Büntgen U, Egli S, Galván JD, Diez JM, Aldea J, Latorre J, F. Martínez-Peña. (2015) Drought-induced changes in the phenology, productivity and diversity of Spanish fungi. Fungal Ecology 16: 6-18
González-Moreno, Pablo, J.M. Diez, D.M. Richardson, M. Vilá. (2015) Beyond climate: disturbance niche shifts in invasive species. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 24(3):360-370.
Contact Us
Opportunities
UO undergraduates
We are always excited to hear from undergraduates who are interested in working in the lab! Opportunities are often available to participate in ongoing research to gain experience, and we highly encourage eventually conducting your own independent project.
Graduate students
We are looking for a Ph.D. student to begin Fall 2025. Please contact Jeff with a brief description of your research experience and interests.
Postdocs
Prospective postdocs interested in the lab’s work are encouraged to get in touch with Jeff to discuss your interests and opportunities for applicable fellowships and grants.
jdiez@uoregon.edu
