DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Effects of matrix habitat on metacommunity dynamics and ecosystem function

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Understanding how the spatial arrangement of habitats in a landscape affects biodiversity, and the resulting consequences for ecosystem services, is a continuing challenge for ecologists. Microcosms provide an opportunity to study landscape-scale processes on a smaller, more tractable scale. A microcosm of soil and leaf litter will be used to examine how the size and spatial arrangement of leaf litter influence the diversity of organisms contained within, and how observed differences in species diversity affects an important ecosystem service: leaf litter decomposition.The results from this project will enable scientists and land managers to manage natural resources more effectively and efficiently, while conserving biodiversity. Conducting research on small, yet critical, soil organisms is challenging because they can be difficult, time consuming, or even impossible to identify visually. This project will use a state-of-the-art method of DNA analysis for rapid and accurate identification of the target organisms. The use and refinement of DNA technology is important for the field of community ecology, and science in general, since adoption of new methods based on the latest technology offers the opportunity to break new ground and to enable research in areas where data collection was previously not practical.