Local and latitudinal variation in abundance: the mechanisms shaping the distribution of an ecosystem engineer

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Introduction

Methods

Study system

Local factors: genetic variation

Local factors: soil nutrient availability and herbivore competitors

Biogeographic variation in the density of rosette gallers

Statistical analyses

Results

Discussion

Conclusions

Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

Nathan J. Sanders is an Academic Editor for PeerJ.

Author Contributions

Gregory M. Crutsinger conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper.

Angélica L. Gonzalez analyzed the data, wrote the paper.

Kerri M. Crawford and Nathan J. Sanders conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper.

Funding

GMC was supported by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at UC Berkeley, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, and an NSERC Discovery grant. KMC was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Presidential Fellowship from Rice University. NJS was supported by DOE-PER grant DE-FG02-08ER64510 and NASA award NNX09AK22G. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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