Research Starter Grant for Postdoctoral Fellow in Biological Informatics: Understanding Multimodality in Animal Size Distributions

由于各种各样的生态原因，体型是一种重要的生物特征。在这项研究中，研究人员提出，研究个体体型的分布可能会提供有关构建自然群落的生态过程的信息。大型数据库的分析将与机械模型相结合，以确定个体体型分布和物种体型分布之间的关系。这种关系--或多个关系--可能暗示了构建生态群落的特定过程。例如，个体和物种身体大小分布之间的相似性将被用来区分竞争有限的资源和从区域物种库中聚集功能相似的物种作为构建群落的主要机制。拟议的研究将产生分析工具和数据库，可广泛用于解决社区生态学中的各种问题。研究人员还将开发Web 2.0工具，以促进远程协作、在线会议以及远程访问服务器上数据的存储和操作。这些工具也将在科学界普遍使用。一名博士后研究员和两名研究生将通过参与这项研究进行培训。

Body size is an important organismal trait for a wide variety of ecological reasons. In this study, the researcher proposes that studying the distribution of individual body sizes may provide information on the ecological processes that structure natural communities. Analysis of large databases will be combined with mechanistic models to determine the relationship between individual body size distributions and species body size distributions. This relationship - or relationships - may then suggest the particular processes that structure ecological communities. For example, similarities between individual and species body size distributions will be used to distinguish between competition for limited resources versus the assembly of functionally-similar species from a regional species pool as the major mechanism structuring a community. The proposed research will generate both analytical tools and databases that can be broadly used to address diverse questions in community ecology. The researcher will also develop Web 2.0 tools to facilitate remote collaboration, on-line meetings, and the storage and manipulation of data on remotely accessible servers. These are tools that will also be of general use in the scientific community. One postdoctoral researcher and two graduate students will be trained through their participation in this research.