Evolution in Pond Metacommunities

了解生态系统如何对环境变化作出反应，对基础生态学和应用生态学都至关重要。迄今为止的工作集中在两个不同的过程，个体种群如何通过进化变化作出反应，以及群落的物种组成如何作出反应。这两个过程之间的相互作用尚未调查，但研究表明，这些过程将相互干扰;也就是说，如果居民物种适应迅速，那么组成变化的可能性较小，反之亦然。研究进一步表明，居民的适应更有可能在孤立的社区和组成的变化更有可能在较不孤立的。环境变化对适应性进化和群落变化的相互作用的影响将在实验性室外围隔生态系统中通过操纵个体物种的遗传组成、群落的物种组成和群落间的扩散量来研究。 人类对环境的影响是改变隔离模式（通过生境破碎化和促进扩散）和改变环境条件（通过富营养化、污染、气候变化等）。更好地了解这些变化可能如何影响生物体、种群、社区和生态系统，将有助于预测生态系统对当前和未来环境变化的反应。这项研究将提供一些隔离，扩散，物种的进化变化和社区组成之间的相互作用的第一个实证研究。

Understanding how ecological systems respond to environmental change is critical to both fundamental and applied ecology. Work to date has focused on two distinct processes, how individual populations respond via evolutionary change, and how the species composition of communities responds. The interaction between these two processes has not been investigated, but studies suggest that these processes will interfere with each other; that is, if resident species adapt rapidly then compositional change is less likely and vice-versa. Studies further suggest that adaptation by residents is more likely in isolated communities and compositional change is more likely in less isolated ones. The effects of environmental change on the interaction of adaptive evolution and community change will be investigated in experimental outdoor mesocosms by manipulating the genetic composition of individual species, the species composition of communities, and the amount of dispersal among communities. Human impacts on environments are changing patterns of isolation (via both habitat fragmentation and facilitated dispersal) and changing environmental conditions (via eutrophication, pollution, climate change, etc.). A better understanding of how these changes are likely to affect organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems will improve predictions of ecosystem responses to current and future environmental change. This research will provide some of the first empirical studies of interactions among isolation, dispersal, evolutionary changes in species, and community composition.