Dissertation Research: The effects of local adaptation on community composition and species interactions

这个项目考察了快速适应不断变化的环境条件的生态后果。环境变化后，栖息物种可能会灭绝，取而代之的是更适合新环境的物种，或者栖息物种可能会适应新环境。现场观察和操控实验将结合起来，以隔离在淡水浮游动物群落中决定这些反应的条件。该项目的目标是预测一群物种在什么情况下能够对环境变化做出反应。这项研究对越来越多的研究人员具有重要意义，他们认识到生态和进化的未来在于这两个领域的统一。它也是研究物种和群落如何应对环境变化的核心。虽然干扰是一些自然群落的一个特征，但通过与人类相关的活动，它的发生正在增加。这项研究通过引入捕食者来解决环境变化问题，但通过分离解释物种和群落如何对环境变化做出反应的因果因素，这项研究可以用于理解群落对各种环境变化的反应：入侵物种(作为组装过程的参与者)、栖息地破坏和人类诱导的气候变化是相关的例子。

This project examines the ecological consequences of rapid adaptation to changing environmental conditions. After environmental change, resident species may either go extinct and be replaced by species more suited to the new environment, or resident species might adapt to their new environment. Field observations and manipulative experiments will be combined to isolate conditions that dictate these responses in a community of freshwater zooplankton. The goal of the project is to predict the circumstances under which a group of species can respond to environmental change.This research has significance for the growing group of researchers who recognize that the future of ecology and evolution lies in the unification of the two fields. It is also central to the study of how species and communities respond to environmental change. Though disturbance is a feature of some natural communities, its occurrence is increasing through human-related activity. This study addresses environmental change via an introduced predator, but by isolating causal factors that explain how a species and communities respond to environmental change, the research can be applied to understanding community response to a variety of environmental changes: invasive species (as participants in the assembly process), habitat destruction, and human-induced climate change are relevant examples.