Dissertation Research: Exploring Metapopulation Dynamics and Life History Evolution in a Single Versus Multiple Host Landscape

随着人类活动继续破坏自然栖息地，人们越来越需要能够量化孤立和分割对个体流动和自然种群动态的影响。我们建议使用分叉真菌甲虫，Bolittherus cornutus，它在几种搁置真菌上完成其整个生命周期，作为一个研究系统，解决与栖息地丧失和片断化对自然种群的影响有关的问题。由于其栖息地在美国东部林区的固有斑块，叉状真菌甲虫及其真菌寄主是研究寄主质量、寄主存在和林地景观中寄主的空间排列如何影响种群动态和物种持久性的理想系统。我们建议通过捕获标记重新捕获技术来研究单个甲虫的运动，以更好地了解散布在斑块景观中的甲虫如何影响种群动态。我们还建议研究当只有一个寄主时与当多个寄主存在时，甲虫的局部和区域种群动态如何变化。我们将使用经验技术，包括CMR研究和宿主选择的行为研究，结合空间上明确的种群模型来更好地理解栖息地异质性(多个宿主的存在)和几何(它们在景观中斑块的排列)如何影响种群的持久性。

As human activities continue to fragment natural habitats, the need grows to be able to quantify the impacts of isolation and subdivision on individual mobility and on dynamics of natural populations. We propose to use the forked fungus beetle, Bolitotherus cornutus, which completes its entire lifecycle on a few species of shelf fungi, as a study system for addressing questions related to the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on natural populations. Because of the inherent patchiness of its habitat in wooded regions of the eastern United States, forked fungus beetles and their fungal hosts are an ideal system for studying how host quality, host presence, and spatial arrangement of hosts in a wooded landscape effect the dynamics of populations as well as the persistence of the species. We propose to study the movement of individual beetles via capture mark recapture techniques to better understand how dispersal in patchy landscapes impacts population dynamics. We also propose to study how local and regional population dynamics of the beetle change when only one of its hosts is present versus when multiple hosts are present. We will use empirical techniques, including the CMR study and behavioral studies of host choice, combined with spatially explicit population models to better understand how habitat heterogeneity (presence of multiple hosts) and geometry (their arrangement of patches in the landscape) impact population persistence.