On the Abundance, Dynamics and Regulation of Damselfish Populations

这项工作的目的是了解结构开放种群的动态和调节，这是大多数海洋珊瑚礁鱼类和无脊椎动物的典型特征。虽然生态学家普遍认为，种群的属性是由不止一个过程共享的（例如，繁殖体的可用性、生命阶段内和生命阶段之间的竞争、与其他物种的竞争、捕食），但对于它们的相对重要性仍存在相当大的分歧。对于不同的过程在产生动力学中所起的作用也存在一些混淆；很少有经验工作者区分调节种群的过程（即边界波动）与导致平均丰度周围变化的过程。人们对珊瑚礁生物丰度波动的原因已经了解得非常多，但对是什么调节了它们的数量却知之甚少。这项工作将在几个关键方面有助于理解动力学和调控的一般问题。这是珊瑚鱼的第一个全面的，多元化的评估之一，将区分过程对调节和变异的影响。第二，它将首次使用业务定义和分析协议对各种过程的相对重要性进行定量评估。因此，研究可以产生标准的方法和程序来解决相对重要性。第三，红外视频技术的应用可以探索很少研究但至关重要的定居和早期死亡过程。

9503305 Schmitt The aim of the work is to understand the dynamics and regulation of structured, open populations, which typify most marine reef fishes and invertebrates. While there is broad agreement among ecologists that attributes of populations are shared by more than an single process (e.g., availability of propagules, competition within and between life stages, competition with other species, predation), there remains considerable disagreement regarding their relative importance. There also is some confusion about what roles various processes have in producing dynamics; few empirical workers have distinguished between processes that regulate populations (i.e., bound fluctuations) as opposed to those that cause variation around the mean abundance. An enormous amount is known about the caused of fluctuations in abundance of reef organisms, but very little is known about what regulates their populations. This work will contribute in several key ways to understanding the general issue of dynamics and regulation. It is one of the first comprehensive, pluralistic evaluations of reef fishes that will distinguish effects of processes on regulation and on variation. Second, it will use for the first time operational definitions and analytical protocols for quantitative assessments of the relative importance of various processes. As such, the research could yield standard approaches and procedures to address relative importance. Third, the application of infrared video technology enables the exploration of little studied but crucial processes of settlement and early mortality.