U.S.-France Cooperative Research: Theoretical Studies on the Conservation Implications of Predator Removal and Introductions

这项为期三年的奖励将支持美国-法国合作研究的理论社区生态学罗伯特D。Holt和法国巴黎高等师范学校生态实验室的Michael Hochberg。 该项目将NSF资助的环境生物学长期项目与法国国家科学研究中心（CNRS）支持的生物多样性研究计划联系起来。 该研究项目的动机是保护生物学的问题所产生的本地捕食者从社区和引进外来捕食者进入社区。 研究人员建议通过对群落模型的详细分析来研究捕食者操纵的后果。 这些群落由少数物种以规定的方式相互作用组成。在他们对这些模型的分析中，研究人员将解决一些问题，如不相连的食物链，捕食者以竞争和非竞争的猎物为食，以及成对的捕食者物种攻击成对的猎物。 美国调查员为这项合作带来了在一般生态理论方面的相当多的专业知识。 法国研究人员对保护生物学中经验性种群研究的模型进行了研究，补充了这一点。 该提案的重点是捕食者的清除和增加，具有保护和生物控制的影响。 其结果可能导致环境管理做法的改进。

This three-year award will support U.S.-France cooperative research in theoretical community ecology between Robert D. Holt of the University of Kansas and Michael Hochberg of the Ecole Normale Superieure's Ecology Laboratory in Paris, France. The project links an NSF-funded Long-Term Project in Environmental Biology to the biodiversity research program supported by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). The research project is motivated by problems in conservation biology arising from removal of native predators from communities and the introduction of exotic predators into communities. The investigators propose to study the consequences of predator manipulation from detailed analyses of community models. These communities consist of a small number of species interacting in a prescribed manner. In their analyses of these models, the investigators will address issues such as unlinked food chains, predators feeding on competing and non competing prey, and pairs of predator species attacking pairs of prey. The U.S. investigator brings to this collaboration considerable expertise in general ecological theory. This is complemented by the French investigator's research on models tailored to empirical population studies in conservation biology. The proposal's focus on predator removals and additions has conservation and biological control implications. Its results may lead to improved practices in environmental management.