OPUS: Food Web Dynamics in Pond Metacommunities

该项目将提供支持，让 PI 撰写关于池塘食物网如何运作的专着。 它将理论与实验结果以及天然池塘的观察相结合，以评估所涉及的复杂过程。 与之前的工作仅强调单个池塘内发生的过程相比，本书将探讨许多池塘之间的分散如何影响这些过程及其结果。 迄今为止在这个主题上所做的最新工作表明，传播极大地改变了食物网的动态，本书将解释为什么会这样。了解食物网的功能对于了解环境变化如何影响自然生态系统至关重要。 越来越清楚的是，这种影响并不是孤立地发生在每个生态系统中，而是连接多个生态系统的扩散是一个关键因素。 对所关注的环境问题管理的影响是，管理必须基于考虑扩散影响的景观视角，而不是专注于忽视这种影响的零碎方法。

This project will provide support to allow the PI to write a monograph on how pond food webs function. It will combine theory with experimental results and observations in natural ponds to evaluate the complex set of processes involved. In contrast with previous work that has emphasized only processes that occur within single ponds, this book will explore how dispersal among many ponds affects these processes and their outcomes. Recent work done to date on this topic shows that dispersal dramatically alters food web dynamics and this book will explain why this is so. Understanding how food webs function is critical in understanding how environmental change is likely to affect natural ecosystems. It is becoming increasingly clear that such effects do not occur in each ecosystem in isolation but rather that dispersal connecting multiple ecosystems is a key factor. The implications for the management of environmental issues of concern are that management will have to be based on a landscape perspective that accounts for the effects of dispersal rather than be focused on piecemeal approaches that ignore such effects.