Spatial Scaling with an Unusual Food Web Structure: The Case of Azteca Ants in the Coffee Agroecosytem

不寻常的食物网结构的空间尺度：咖啡农业生态系统中的阿兹台克蚂蚁案例

• 批准号: 0349388
• 负责人: Ivette Perfecto
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-03-01 至 2011-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0349388&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Spatial; Scaling; Unusual; Food; Web

Nature is not arranged in a uniform way. Patches are evident wherever you look, from localized disease outbreaks, to species of plants in the forest, to barnacles on the tidal rocks. This spatial aggregation of species and ecosystems has intrigued ecologists for many years and many techniques exist for describing the existing patterns. However, it is frequently quite enigmatic how the patterns are formed, what it is that creates the patches in the first place. In this research a common species of ant that occurs throughout the new world tropics, and is regarded as a potential pest species in several crops, is known to occur in relatively large patches. It is also known to protect scale insects from ever-present parasitic wasps, but is frequently attacked by a species of parasitic fly. The local dynamics thus involve two "predator-prey" systems (wasp versus scale insect and parasitic fly versus ant) coupled together with a key mutualism (the ant's protecting the scale insects). Using recent advances in ecological theory, these local details will be translated into a mathematical model that will then be used to explore the underlying mechanisms of how the patches are formed, and what their ultimate fate might be.

自然界不是以一种统一的方式排列的。无论你往哪里看，斑块都很明显，从局部疾病爆发到森林中的植物物种，再到潮汐岩石上的藤壶。这种物种和生态系统的空间聚集多年来一直引起生态学家的兴趣，并且存在许多描述现有模式的技术。然而，这些图案是如何形成的，以及最初是什么造成了这些斑块，通常都是相当神秘的。在这项研究中，一种常见的蚂蚁出现在整个新世界热带地区，被认为是几种作物的潜在害虫，已知出现在相对较大的斑块上。它也被认为可以保护介壳昆虫免受无处不在的寄生蜂的攻击，但经常受到一种寄生蝇的攻击。因此，局部动态涉及两个“捕食者-猎物”系统（黄蜂对抗蚧虫和寄生蝇对抗蚂蚁），以及一个关键的互惠关系（蚂蚁保护蚧虫）。利用生态学理论的最新进展，这些局部细节将被转化为一个数学模型，然后用于探索斑块形成的潜在机制，以及它们的最终命运可能是什么。