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

这一为期三年的奖项将支持堪萨斯大学的罗伯特·D·霍尔特和法国巴黎诺曼高等学院生态实验室的迈克尔·霍奇伯格在理论群落生态学方面的美法合作研究。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。这项研究项目的动机是保护生物学方面的问题，这些问题源于将本土捕食者从社区中移走，以及将外来捕食者引入社区。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。在对这些模型的分析中，研究人员将解决诸如食物链不相连、捕食竞争和非竞争猎物的捕食者以及攻击成对猎物的捕食者物种对等问题。这位美国研究人员为这次合作带来了一般生态学理论方面的相当大的专业知识。这一点得到了法国研究人员对模型的研究的补充，这些模型是为保护生物学中的经验种群研究量身定做的。该提案将重点放在捕食者的移除和添加上，这具有保护和生物防治的意义。其结果可能会改善环境管理的做法。

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.