Population Dynamics in a Heterogenous Environment: The Effect of Variance in Plant Quality on Herbivore Populations in Time and Space

0089570. 诺拉安德伍德。 相当多的生态学研究已经记录了食草动物对食物平均特征的反应方式;然而，人们对食物质量的变化影响个体食草动物或食草动物种群的方式知之甚少。 拟议的研究将量化植物质量差异影响个体运动的方式，以及昆虫食草动物的种群动态。 一个空间显式模型将被用来研究草食动物运动如何影响植物质量的方差和种群动态之间的相互作用在时间和空间。 该模型将提供一个框架，了解如何在表型，基因型，或植物品种之间的质量差异影响昆虫demographics.Field实验将研究如何在草莓种群的遗传基础上的质量变化影响草莓蚜虫的运动和种群动态。 短期实验将量化的方式，个别蚜虫的运动是相关的群体水平的差异，在饲料质量。 长期实验将把蚜虫种群的动态反应与食物质量的不同种类的变化联系起来，从植物单一栽培的特征到两种至六种不同基因型的混合栽培的特征。 这种方法将有助于严格审查的假设，即农业混合的植物品种（基因型）支持较低的人口密度的害虫比单作。 最后，将植物质量的遗传变异与食草动物的人口统计学联系起来，为理解植物-食草动物动态提供了一个关键的生态和进化观点的综合。

0089570. Nora Underwood. Considerable ecological research has documented the way in which herbivores respond to mean characteristics of their food; however, little is known about the way in which variability in food quality affects individual herbivores or populations of herbivores. The proposed research will quantify the way in which variance in quality among plants affects the movement of individuals, as well as the population dynamics of insect herbivores. A spatially explicit model will be used to examine how herbivore movement influences the interaction between the variance in plant quality and population dynamics in time and space. This model will then provide a framework for understanding how variance in quality among phenotypes, genotypes, or species of plants affects insect demographics.Field experiments will examine how variability in the genetically based quality of strawberry populations affects the movements and population dynamics of the strawberry aphid. Short-term experiments will quantify the way in which the movement of individual aphids is related to population-level variance in forage quality. Longer-term experiments will relate the dynamical response of aphid populations to different kinds of variance in food quality, ranging from that characteristic of plant monocultures to that characteristic of mixed cultures of two to six different genotypes. This approach will facilitate a critical examination of the hypothesis that agricultural mixtures of plant varieties (genotypes) support lower population densities of pests than will monocultures. Finally, linking the genetic variance in plant quality to the demographics of herbivores provides a critical synthesis of ecological and evolutionary perspectives in understanding plant-herbivore dynamics.