Resource Competition Theory: The Link between Climate Change and Diatom Sedimentary Assemblages in the YellowstoneEcosystem

9407377 Kilham这项研究解决了生态议程的主要问题之一：气候变化与生态群落的结构，功能和生存的关系。本研究的目的是（1）描述黄石国家公园地区8个主要硅藻物种对温度、光照、硅、磷和氮的生理反应;（2）确定物种的相对竞争能力;（3）对物种的丰度和相对竞争能力进行实地研究。一套湖泊沉积记录，加上积极和紧张的调查景观，气候和湖沼变化正在进行的黄石生态系统，提供了一个无与伦比的机会，将资源竞争理论与实地观察硅藻组合，进化和灭绝。本研究将结合资源竞争理论的预测和结果与黄石地区湖泊硅藻组合结构变化的观察，以解释目前的硅藻分布，并测试提出的解释全新世硅藻分布的因果因素。 这项研究提供了一个很强的因果关系之间的联系湖沼学和过程导向的生理生态学，以获取必要的信息，详细解释的古记录和坚实的基础，发展的水平转换功能，将导致精细尺度的气候重建。

9407377 Kilham This research addresses one of the major concerns of the ecological agenda: the relationship of climate change to the structure, function and survival of ecological communities. The objectives of the study are (1) to characterize the physiological responses of the eight dominant diatom species from selected lakes of the Yellowstone National Park region to temperature, light, silicon, phosphorus, and nitrogen, (2) to determine the relative competitive abilities of the species, and (3) to perform field studies on the abundances and relative competitive abilities of the species. A set of lacustrine sedimentary records, coupled with active and intense investigations on landscape, climatic and limnological changes underway in Yellowstone ecosystems, provides an unparalleled opportunity to incorporate resource competition theory with field observations on diatom assemblages, evolution and extinction. This study will integrate the predictions and results based on resource competition theory with observations with changes in the structure of diatom assemblages in the lakes of the Yellowstone Region to explain the present diatom distributions and to test the causal factors proposed to explain diatom distributions over the Holocene. %%% This research provides a strong causal linkage between limnology and process-oriented physiological ecology to acquire information necessary for a detailed interpretation of the paleorecord and a firm basis for developing landscape-level transfer functions that will lead to fine-scale climate reconstructions.