OPUS: Food Web Dynamics in Pond Metacommunities

该项目将提供支持，允许PI撰写关于池塘食物网如何运作的专著。它将把理论与实验结果和在天然池塘中的观察结合起来，以评估所涉及的复杂过程。与以前的工作相比，只强调在单个池塘中发生的过程，这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。最近关于这一主题的研究表明，分散极大地改变了食物网的动态，本书将解释为什么会这样。了解食物网如何运作对于了解环境变化如何可能影响自然生态系统至关重要。越来越清楚的是，这种影响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分散是一个关键因素。对令人关切的环境问题的管理的影响是，管理将必须以考虑到扩散影响的景观观点为基础，而不是集中于忽视这种影响的零碎办法。

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.