Plant Ecology and Evolution in Harsh Environments

I first became interested in harsh environments when I took an internship at the Donald and Sylvia McLaughlin reserve in northern California, where faculty and graduate students come from around the world to study the unique properties of serpentine soils. Little did I know that I would go on to join these researchers in the study of extreme environments as model systems in plant ecology and evolution. It may seem strange that we go to the extremes of the earth to study fundamental questions about the structure of the natural world, but there is a long tradition of studying ‘‘life on the edge.’’ We thrive on the study of organisms surviving on nutrient-poor soils or in extreme temperatures because they live on the brink of evolution and diversification. Harsh environments allow us to ask and answer complex questions such as: how fast does evolutionary change occur over environmental gradients, or how will ecosystems with low productivity respond to a warming climate? In a research field that is growing vastly, it is important that we take lessons from all different types of harsh ecosystems—not only from those habitats that are well studied (such as serpentine), but also from other stressful habitats such as gypsum soils, saline soils, and mine tailings. We can also benefit by expanding these questions to taxonomic groups other than flowering plants (such as bryophytes, lichens, and mycorrhizae) and by drawing linkages among different taxa. The new book by Nishanta Rajakaruna, Robert S. Boyd, and Tanner B. Harris, Plant Ecology and Evolution in Harsh Environments, contains many important lessons for researchers and educators in the field of plant ecology, evolution, and morphology. In the preface of this new book, the authors write that they aim to ‘‘bring together a wide range of topics on ecology and evolution in harsh environments of plants...written by experts around the world.’’ I believe that they have succeeded in that goal. Plant ecology and evolution in stressful environments is the central theme in several classic reviews, for example: Grime (1988) RHODORA, Vol. 117, No. 969, pp. 106–108, 2015 E Copyright 2015 by the New England Botanical Club