Ecological Interactions Across Ecotones

生态群落通常被定义为特定栖息地的物种集合，这些物种之间的营养相互作用以静态食物网为代表。然而，大多数群落并没有受到邻近栖息地物种的影响，个体可以随着体型的变化而改变它们在食物网中的位置或在栖息地之间移动。该奖项侧重于跨越栖息地边界发生的相互作用，通过对自然种群的观察、对栖息地边界的实验操纵和人工栖息地的实验来估计溪流和林地群落成员之间相互作用的重要性。本研究以蝾螈资源和蝾螈种群之间的相互作用为研究重点，对复杂生命周期维持的生态学理论进行了检验，并对大小结构种群之间的相互作用以及群落之间的相互作用在景观生态学中的作用进行了建模。研究生境边界上物种间的相互作用，对于理解土地利用模式变化导致的生境破碎化的后果具有重要意义。

An Ecological community is usually defined as an assemblage of species in a given habitat, with trophic interactions among these species represented by a static food web. Most communities, however are not isolated from the effects of species in adjacent habitats and individuals can change their position in the food web or move between habitats as they change body size. This award focuses on interactions that take place across habitat boundaries, using observations of natural populations, experimental manipulation of habitat boundaries, and experiments in artificial habitats to estimate the importance of interactions between members of stream and wooodland communities. The study focuses on resources of salamanders and on interactions among salamander populations and it tests ecological theories on the maintenance of complex life cycles and models interactions between size-structured populations as well as the role of interactions between communities in landscape ecology. The study of interactions among species at habitat boundaries is important to understanding the consequences of habitat fragmentation that results from shifting land use patterns.