Biodiversity Adaptation Transect Sydney

Background

The Biodiversity Adaptation Transect Sydney (BATS) improves understanding of what controls the composition of ecosystems, and helps identify and monitor the drivers of change. In contrast to other transects that investigate major compositional shifts in vegetation types, the BATS is investigating environmentally driven shifts within one highly diverse vegetation type; the nutrient-poor sandstones of the Sydney basin. Quantifying turnover within one vegetation type along a short but steep gradient, enables characterization of the relative impacts of plasticity versus local adaptation within a replicated (multiple plots, multiple species), dynamic, and connected system. Experimental and observational research will uncover the mechanisms leading to evolutionary diversification, and establish predictive measures of resilience to change.

Research Infrastructure

The BATS is investigating how floristic diversity changes across an environmental gradient in the Sydney region in New South Wales. The study area is between the coast (1360 mm mean annual rainfall) and the Capertee Valley, west of the Great Dividing Range (620 mm). A landscape-scale approach is being used to investigate taxonomic, functional, genetic and genomic turn-over along a natural environmental gradient. The research is being conducted in three parts:

Plot-based research along an environmental transect traversing the sandstone soils of the Sydney region exploring species turnover across altitudinal and rainfall gradients.
Research contrasting plastic versus adaptive variation in two species co-occurring along the same environmental gradient.
Research which places genetic turn-over along this transect into the broader context of genetic variation across the entire distributional range of the same species. This will help determine whether altitudinal variation is similar to latitudinal variation.

General location	Sydney coast to the Capertee Valley in New South Wales
Research infrastructure themes	Ecosystem turnover along rainfall and altitudinal gradients. Taxonomic, functional and genetic turnover along the transect. Links between phenotypic/genomic plasticity and selective response for key species across environmental gradients.
Year Established	2011
Transect Length	200 km
No. of plots	36
Rainfall Gradient (mean annual)	1360 mm – 620 mm
Data type	Vegetation abundance, traits (plant height, leaf and seed dimensions, leaf and seed characteristics) and climate (temperature)
Temporal revisit (ideal)	3 to 5 years
TERN Facilities on the BATS	AusPlots; Australian Supersite Network; Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTERN); OzFlux

Collaborators

Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust
Macquarie University
The University of Sydney
Australian Research Council

Transect leader

Maurizio Rossetto

Maurizio.rossetto@rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au

Publications

Papers and Reports

Australian Transect Network data are published in the TERN AEKOS Portal where it is freely available to the research community:

TERN Ausplots data on BATS: http://www.aekos.org.au/collection/adelaide.edu.au/ausplotsrangelands
Search in AEKOS by the following site IDs for AusPlots co-located on the BATS - NSTSYB0001, NSTSYB0002, NSTSYB0003, NSTSYB0004, NSTSYB0005, NSTNSS0001, NSTSYB0006, NSTSYB0007, NSTSYB0008, NSTSYB0009 (list current at April 2017)

Links

https://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/Science-Conservation/Our-Work-Discoveries/Evolutionary-Ecology/Biodiversity-and-Adaptation-Transect-Sydney-(BATS)

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