Spatio-temporal response patterns of ecological networks to anthropogenic stressors

生态恢复被广泛应用于生物多样性保护中，以对抗生态系统退化，减缓生物多样性的丧失。然而，恢复干预措施在支持自我维持社区方面的效力很少得到量化。研究人员和自然资源保护主义者的目标不是只关注物种作为研究单位，而是了解，保护和恢复生态系统功能，这在很大程度上是通过物种之间的相互作用来维持的。了解整个社区的生物相互作用对环境变化的反应是必要的，以帮助保护管理和项目生态系统的功能和服务，未来的土地使用和生物多样性的情景。在这里，我的目标是促进对环境威胁（如入侵物种）和减轻这些威胁（如通过生态恢复）的生态系统功能的机制的理解，并提供预测如何维持生态系统功能（如授粉）在未来的生物多样性丧失的情况下。具体而言，两个项目组成部分中的第一个将研究移走外来物种对物种之间的本地互利（授粉和种子传播）和拮抗（花蜜和花粉小偷和种子捕食者）相互作用的长期时空反应。我将通过实验评估这两种相互作用类型的原生植物适合度的净收益和损失，并通过实施多层网络方法分析其对群落动态的直接和间接影响。第二个组成部分将调查两种社区一级干预措施对传粉者行为的影响：清除外来入侵植物（恢复实验）和增加植物传粉者群落中外来蜜蜂（增加实验）。我将评估外来和本地的超级通才传粉者如何在传粉网络中对花资源进行竞争，并在两个实验场景下对濒危植物的授粉成功做出贡献。为了增加我们的实验方法的一般性，我将模型的相互作用动力学的授粉网络的成本和健身功能，占外来和本地传粉者之间的种内和种间竞争。从这个模型中得出的预测将与来自田间实验的授粉网络数据和来自同一系统的早期发表的工作进行交叉验证。拟议的研究将为推进关于环境变化对生态系统功能影响的基础和应用生态知识做出重要贡献，并协助实施以科学为基础的保护管理战略，以减轻生物多样性的丧失。

Ecological restoration is employed widely in biodiversity conservation to counteract ecosystem degradation and slow the loss of diversity. Yet the efficacy of restoration interventions for supporting self-sustaining communities has rarely been quantified. Instead of focussing only on species as the unit of study, researchers and conservationists aim to understand, preserve and restore ecosystem functioning, which is largely maintained by interactions between species. Understanding community-wide responses of biotic interactions to environmental change is needed to aid conservation management and to project ecosystem functions and services to future land-use and biodiversity scenarios. Here, I aim to advance understanding of the mechanisms that link environmental threats (e.g. invasive species) and the mitigation of these threats (e.g. through ecological restoration) to ecosystem functioning, and provide predictions on how to sustain ecosystem functions (e.g. pollination) under future scenarios of biodiversity loss. Specifically, the first of two project components will address research the longer-term spatio-temporal responses of the removal of exotic species on native mutualistic (pollination and seed dispersal) and antagonistic (nectar and pollen thieves and seed predator) interactions between species. I will experimentally evaluate the net gains and losses to native plant fitness of both interaction types and analyse their direct and indirect effects on community dynamics by implementing a multilayer network approach. The second component will investigate changes in pollinator behaviour in response to two types of community-level interventions: the removal of invasive exotic plants (restoration experiment), and the augmentation of exotic honey bees in plant-pollinator communities (augmentation experiment). I will evaluate how exotic and native super-generalist pollinators exert competition for floral resources on less abundant flower-visitors in pollination networks and contribute to pollination success of endangered plants under the two experimental scenarios. To increase the generality of our experimental approach I will model interaction dynamics of pollination networks with cost and fitness functions to account for intra- and interspecific competition between exotic and native pollinators. The predictions derived from this model will be cross-validated with pollination network data from the field experiments and earlier published work from the same system. The proposed research will provide an important contribution to advancing basic and applied ecological knowledge on the impact of environmental change on ecosystem functions, and assist with implementing science-based conservation management strategies to alleviate biodiversity loss.