How Competition and Parasitism Control Diversity in Ant Communities: Testing a Mechanistic Theory

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PROJECT ASTRACTThis project seeks to discover the general rules that govern how natural ecological communities are put together. Discovery of these rules will have immense practical value in predicting the causes and consequences of biological invasions, evaluating the influence of biodiversity in ecosystem functions, directing the restoration of degraded ecosystems, and guiding the development of public environmental policy. We have selected ant communities for study because they have long served as a model system for studying ecological processes that control patterns of species richness, species composition and relative abundance of species. The primary goal of this project is to develop and test an integrative, mechanistic theory of species interactions in local ant communities. This theory focuses on a set of interspecific trade-offs as a general mechanism that controls species richness, composition and abundance in ant communities. The project will be the first attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of species interactions in ant communities that integrates the effects of both competition for shared resources and attack by natural enemies. The approach of identifying generalized trade-offs associated with competitive ability and defense against natural enemies should have broad applicability and lead to efficient and rapid progress toward a general understanding of ecological communities. In addition to the proposed research, the major educational goal of this project is to begin training a new generation of community ecologists who are equally adept at theoretical modeling and empirical analysis.