U.S.- United Kingdom Cooperative Science: Competition, Herbivory and Size Variability in Plant Populations

该奖项将支持斯沃斯莫尔学院的Jacob Weiner博士和英国西尔伍德公园帝国学院的Michael J. Crawey博士之间的合作研究。该项目的目的是研究竞争和草食之间的相互作用，以确定植物种群的大小变化。这将通过两种方式实现。首先，研究人员将进行一项大型多因素实验，研究植物密度和蛞蝓食草性对温室白三叶草种群大小分布的影响和相互作用。这将使他们能够测试一些关于食草对植物大小分布的影响的假设，以及食草的影响如何通过植物之间的竞争来调节。其次，研究人员将使用新的统计方法分析在Silwood公园收集的大量数据集，以了解兔食对冬小麦种群的影响。这将使这些假设经受更严格的实地条件检验。该项目将结合Crawley博士在草食学方面的专业知识和Weiner博士在植物种群结构分析方面的专业知识。这项研究在希尔伍德公园的表现是特别重要的，由于强大的研究师资在场。本研究的结果将有助于我们对植物种群大小变化机制的理解。

This award will support collaborative research between Dr. Jacob Weiner, Swarthmore College and Dr. Michael J. Crawey, Imperial College at Silwood Park, England. The objective of the project is to examine the interactions between competition and herbivory in determining the size variability in plant populations. This will be accomplished in two ways. First, the investigators will execute a large multifactoral experiment which will look at the effects and interactions between plant density and slug herbivory on size distributions in greenhouse populations of white clover. This will enable them to test several hypotheses about the influence of herbivory on plant size distributions, and how the effects of herbivory are mediated by competition between plants. Second, the investigators will use new statistical methods to analyze large data sets which have been collected over several years at Silwood Park on the effect of rabbit herbivory on populations of winter wheat. This will submit the hypotheses to the more rigorous test of field conditions. This project will combine Dr. Crawley's expertise with herbivory and Dr. Weiner's expertise in the analysis of plant population structure. The performance of this study at Silwood Park is particularly important, due to the strong research faculty present. The results of this research will contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that produce size variation in plant population.