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

这项研究探讨了自然群落如何应对温度变化。 食物网是物种相互作用的图形表示，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强烈地影响着自然群落中物种的丰富度和多样性。这项研究将解决这个问题，什么是温度的影响，自上而下和自下而上的影响在食物网中的相对重要性？ 这个问题将解决实验中使用的模式水生群落内发现的叶片的猪笼草。 捕食者和资源水平将在一系列温度下进行操纵，食物网中种群的反应将用于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管理和保护至关重要。 此外，了解温度对物种相互作用和群落水平过程的影响是特别感兴趣的，由于预期持续的全球变暖。 拟议的工作将在不断变化的环境中进行食物网监管的基础研究。

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.