SGER: Collaborative: Mechanisms of Community Re-Assembly After a Catastrophic Fire

2002年夏天，北美西部经历了有记录以来最大的森林火灾之一。这场饼干大火烧毁了俄勒冈州和加利福尼亚州近50万英亩的原始栖息地。这个项目将利用这场大火留下的复制的烧毁和未烧毁的遗址的马赛克，并应用一种实验性的方法来解决社区生态学中的一般问题。因为P.I.已经收集了该地区植物和蚂蚁群落结构的燃烧前数据，所以他们处于一个独特的位置，可以跟踪与初始条件相比的群落重组的轨迹。在复制地点，他们将建立屏障，将蚂蚁排除在外，蚂蚁是主要的种子传播剂，并测试对植物群落聚集的速度和轨迹的影响，特别是在孤立的沼泽中。这项工作将极大地扩展我们在灾难性火灾后蚂蚁-植物群落相互作用和重组方面的知识。

During the summer of 2002, western North America experienced one of the largest forest fires in recorded history. The Biscuit Fire burned nearly one half million acres of mostly pristine habitats in Oregon and California. This project will exploit the mosaic of replicated burned and unburned sites left by this fire, and apply an experimental approach to address general questions in community ecology. Because the P.I.s had collected pre-burn data on the structure of the plant and ant communities in this area, they are in a unique position to follow trajectories of community re-assembly compared to initial conditions. At replicated sites they will erect barriers to exclude ants, a major seed dispersal agent, and test for effects on rates and trajectories of plant community assembly, especially in isolated fens. This work will significantly extend our knowledge on ant-plant community interactions and re-assembly after catastrophic fire.