DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Community Level Response to Global Change: The Effect of Temperature on the Relative Importance of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Effects

这项研究考察了自然群落如何对温度变化作出反应。食物网是物种相互作用的图像表现，特别是谁吃谁的喂养关系。在食物网理论中，捕食者对猎物的影响被称为自上而下的影响，而资源对消费者的影响被称为自下而上的影响。自上而下和自下而上的效应对自然群落中物种的丰度和多样性有重要影响。这项研究将解决这样一个问题：在食物网中，温度对自上而下和自下而上的相对重要性有什么影响？这个问题将通过在猪笼草叶子中发现的模型水生群落来解决。捕食者和资源水平将在一定温度范围内被控制，食物网中种群的反应将被用来计算自上而下和自下而上效应的强度。了解食物网的结构和动态以及其中的物种相互作用对生态系统的管理和保护至关重要。此外，由于对全球持续变暖的预期，了解温度对物种相互作用和群落水平过程的影响是特别有趣的。拟议的工作将食品网监管的基础研究置于不断变化的环境背景下。

This research examines how natural communities may respond to changing temperature. Food webs are pictorial representations of species interactions, specifically feeding relationships of who eats whom. Within food web theory, the effects of predators on their prey are known as top-down effects, while the effects of resources on consumers are known as bottom-up effects. Top-down and bottom-up effects strongly influence the abundance and diversity of species in natural communities. This research will address the question, what is the effect of temperature on the relative importance of top-down and bottom-up effects in a food web? This question will be addressed experimentally using the model aquatic community found within the leaves of pitcher plants. Predator and resource levels will be manipulated at a range of temperatures and the response of populations in the food web will be used to calculate the strength of top-down and bottom-up effects. Understanding of the structure and dynamics of food webs and the species interactions within them is of vital importance to ecosystem management and conservation. Additionally, understanding the effects of temperature on species interactions and community level processes is of particular interest due to expectations of continued global warming. The proposed work puts basic research of food web regulation in the context of a changing environment.