On the Abundance, Dynamics and Regulation of Damselfish Populations

9503305施密特这项工作的目的是了解结构开放的种群的动态和调节，这些种群是大多数海洋珊瑚鱼和无脊椎动物的典型。虽然生态学家普遍认为种群的属性由不止一个过程共享(例如，繁殖体的可获得性、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然存在相当大的分歧。对于不同的过程在产生动态中扮演什么角色也存在一些混淆；很少有经验的工作者区分调节种群(即结合波动)的过程和引起平均丰度变化的过程。关于珊瑚礁生物丰度波动的原因，我们知道的很多，但关于是什么控制了它们的数量，人们知之甚少。这项工作将在几个关键方面有助于理解动态和监管的一般问题。这是第一批全面的、多元化的珊瑚礁鱼类评估之一，将区分调节过程和变异过程的影响。第二，它将首次使用业务定义和分析方案对各种进程的相对重要性进行定量评估。因此，这项研究可以产生解决相对重要性问题的标准方法和程序。第三，红外摄像技术的应用使人们能够探索很少被研究但却至关重要的聚落和早期死亡过程。

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.