Dissertation Research: Assessing the Strength of Competition in the Fossil Record

论文研究：评估化石记录中的竞争强度

• 批准号: 0608505
• 负责人: Elizabeth Hadly
• 金额: $ 0.66万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-01 至 2007-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0608505&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Assessing; Strength; Competition

The project investigates the interspecific ecological interactions between small mammals over the past three millennia in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), a center of extraordinary biodiversity in the heart of North America. By integrating the recent fossil record and modern ecological experiments, it will be possible to determine how competition structures modern and ancient biological communities. The overarching goal is to reveal whether these interactions are similar in modern and ancient communities and to predict the importance of these interactions in the future. Modern experiments were conducted to describe the ecological mechanisms governing the abundance of voles sharing habitats across an environmental gradient. Results of these experiments are used to predict abundances over time of the same species in the GYE fossil record. Using fossils, the relationship between the outcome of the competitive interaction and climatic change is explored and new insights have begun to emerge. These data suggest that (1) ancient and modern interspecific interactions are similar; and (2) past fluctuations in climate directly influenced the abundance of one species, which indirectly influenced the abundance of the competitor. NSF funding will enable broader sampling of multiple fossil locales across time in order to establish the generalities of our preliminary results. Results to date point to the cascading effects of climate change in biological communities, which is ameliorated by species coexistence. Further, this study illustrates the importance of understanding how modern species responded to past climatic change in order to predict how species will respond to future climatic change.

该项目调查了过去三千年来大黄石生态系统（GYE）中小型哺乳动物之间的种间生态相互作用，该生态系统是北美中心非凡的生物多样性中心。通过整合最近的化石记录和现代生态实验，将有可能确定竞争如何构建现代和古代生物群落。总体目标是揭示这些相互作用在现代和古代社区中是否相似，并预测这些相互作用在未来的重要性。现代实验旨在描述控制跨环境梯度共享栖息地的田鼠丰度的生态机制。这些实验的结果用于预测 GYE 化石记录中同一物种随时间的丰度。利用化石，人们探索了竞争相互作用的结果与气候变化之间的关系，并开始出现新的见解。 这些数据表明（1）古代和现代的种间相互作用是相似的； （2）过去的气候波动直接影响了一个物种的丰富度，从而间接影响了竞争对手的丰富度。美国国家科学基金会的资助将能够对多个化石地点进行更广泛的采样，以确定我们初步结果的普遍性。迄今为止的结果表明，气候变化对生物群落产生连锁效应，而物种共存可以改善这种效应。此外，这项研究还说明了了解现代物种如何应对过去气候变化的重要性，以预测物种将如何应对未来的气候变化。