Assessment of Community Size Structure in Adjacent Habitats: An Exploratory Experimental Study of the Benthic-Pelagic System

9528840斯雷克尔德动植物群落经常受到来自邻近栖息地的物质流动或有机体运动的影响，尽管对邻近群落的影响程度鲜为人知。在水生系统中，这些邻近的影响是通过水循环、沉积、再悬浮或关键消费者或猎物物种的生活史运动来调节的。虽然自然群落中生物体的大小频率分布已被用来了解个别群落中的营养相互作用，但拟议的研究将调查相邻生境中大小结构变化相互关联的程度，这可能表明重要的生境间联系。这项拟议的研究将使用28个池塘的实验，通过评估实验引起的一个栖息地的大小结构变化是否会导致邻近栖息地的群落大小结构变化相似或互补，来检查底层和开阔水域栖息地的群落之间的联系。一系列已知的影响两个生境之一的生物量和颗粒磷的大小分布的营养和消费者处理组合将被用来衡量相邻生境的群落是如何联系在一起的。由于异质性在生境的空间排列中很常见，因此，组织一个生境的群落的过程可能会影响邻近生境的群落，甚至超出了通常存在的和有充分记录的边缘效应。拟议的池塘实验是第一个直接评估一个生境的大小结构变化是否以及在多大程度上与邻近生境的大小结构变化有关的水生研究，提供了水生系统中群落联系的证据，并为评估其他系统中的景观水平格局提供了一种手段。

9528840 Threlkeld Plant and animal communities are often influenced by material flows or organism movements from adjacent habitats, although the extent of influence on neighboring communities is poorly known. In aquatic systems, these neighborhood influences are mediated through water circulation, sedimentation, resuspension, or the life history movements of key consumer or prey species. Although the size frequency distribution of organisms in natural communities has been used to understand trophic interactions in individual communities, the proposed research will investigate the extent to which size structure changes in adjacent habitats are related to each other, which might suggest important inter-habitat linkages. The proposed research will use a 28-pond experiment to examine the link between communities in bottom and open water habitats by evaluating if experimentally-induced changes in size structure in one habitat result in similar or complementary community size structure changes in the adjacent habitat. A broad array of nutrient and consumer treatment combinations known to influence size distributions of biomass and particulate phosphorus in one of the two habitats will be used to measure how communities in adjacent habitats are linked. Because heterogeneity is common in the spatial arrangement of habitats, it follows that processes organizing the community of one habitat may influence those of adjacent habitats, even beyond edge effects which are often present and well documented. The proposed pond experiment is the first aquatic study to evaluate directly if and to what extent size structure changes in one habitat are related to those in adjacent habitats, providing evidence of community linkage in aquatic systems and a means for evaluating landscape level patterns in other systems.