Lara A. Souza, PhD
Associate Professor and Associate Director of the School of Biological Sciences
I am broadly interested in the role of global change, such as biological invasions and climatic change, in shaping the structure of plant communities and associated ecosystem processes.
More specifically, I investigate the role of resource and climatic gradients, and the interplay of such factors, in structuring diversity and associated functional traits across and within species in natural plant communities across spatial and temporal scales.
Further, I quantify how diversity, both within and across species, mediates ecosystem properties such as productivity and net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange in the context of global change. We work in temperate prairies, tropical savannas and montane meadows in order to tackle our research questions.
Means MM, Crews TE, Souza L (2022) Annual and perennial crop composition impacts on soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics at two different depths. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. 1-8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170522000084
Castillioni K, Patten MA, Souza L. (2022) Precipitation effects on grassland performance are lessened by hay harvest. Scientific Reports. 12:1-13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06961-7
Teixeira, J, Souza L, Soizig X, Fidelis AT (2021) Fire promotes functional plant diversity and modifies soil carbon dynamics in tropical savanna. Science of the Total Environment. 812, 152317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152317
Prather RM, Castillioni K, Welti EAR, Kaspari M, and Souza L (2020) Abiotic factors and plant biomass, not plant diversity, strongly shape grassland arthropods under drought conditions. Ecology https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3033
