RIG Transboundary ecosystem services of migratory bats: modeling spatial mismatches and subsidies

人类从许多物种的活动中受益。这些好处或生态系统服务的例子包括控制作物病虫害、为食用植物授粉以及从水和土壤中去除污染物。如果一个物种生活在它提供生态系统服务的地方，将保护该物种的努力与它提供的利益联系起来可能是相对直接的。对于迁徙物种来说，这种联系可能更加困难，因为它们可能在其地理范围的某一部分提供更多的好处。例如，一些迁徙蝙蝠在墨西哥中部越冬，并在美墨边境地区避暑，在那里它们捕食困扰棉花作物的害虫。美国的棉花收入高于墨西哥，因此食虫蝙蝠提供的生态系统服务在美国的价值可能高于墨西哥。不同地点提供的生态系统服务价值的差异可能不能反映不同生境对提供这些服务的物种的重要性。如果对该物种至关重要的地区的人们得不到直接的好处，他们可能就没有什么动机来保护关键的栖息地。此外，受益最多的地区的人们可能会从第一个地点的人那里获得补贴。该项目将量化对迁徙的自由尾巴蝙蝠的这些补贴，并建立一个框架，以实施支付制度，以激励该物种对人类的直接好处较少的地区的栖息地保护。该项目的更广泛影响将包括支持一名年轻的西班牙裔女教员，培训一名少数族裔博士后研究员，指导一名本科生研究人员，开发用于本科生班级的生态系统服务教育工具，以及开发一个对资源管理人员有用的框架。

People benefit from the activities of many species. Examples of these benefits, or ecosystem services, include controlling crop pests, pollinating food plants, and removing contaminants from water and soils. If a species lives where it provides an ecosystem service it may be relatively straightforward to link efforts to protect that species to the benefits that it provides. This linkage may be more difficult for migratory species, which may provide more benefits in one part of their geographic range. For example, some migratory bats overwinter in central Mexico and spend summers in US-Mexico borderlands where they consume pests that plague cotton crops. Cotton revenues are greater in the United States than in Mexico, so the value of ecosystem services provided by insect-eating bats may be greater in the US than in Mexico. Disparities in the value of ecosystem services provided in different locations may not reflect the importance of different habitats to the species providing those services. If people in an area that is critical to the species get no direct benefits, they may have few incentives to conserve critical habitat. Further, people in the area that reaps the most benefit may be getting a subsidy from people in the first location. This project will quantify these subsidies for migratory free-tailed bats and establish a framework for implementing a payment system that can incentivize habitat conservation in areas where the species provide less direct benefit to humans. Broader impacts of this project will include support for a junior female Hispanic faculty member, training of a minority postdoctoral researcher, mentoring of an undergraduate researcher, development of educational tools for use in an undergraduate class on ecosystem services, and development of a framework that should be useful to resource managers.