RCN: Synthesizing Deep Time and Recent Community Ecology

了解生态系统的结构、功能和动态是生态学研究的中心目标。古生物学家也在利用植物和动物化石的关联来重建过去的生态群落。现代生态学对当今生态系统的各个组成部分是如何运作的了解很多，但对长期将群落和生态系统联系在一起的联系却知之甚少。深入的古生态学研究（从几千年前到几亿年前）可以揭示群落在进化过程中是如何变化的，以及它们是如何应对主要环境变化的。该项目将建立一个研究协调网络，将生态学家和古生物学家聚集在一起，努力弥合生态学和古生态学之间的差距，并应用现代生态学理论深入了解过去4亿年的陆地动植物。网络资源和专业知识将集中于以下中心问题：在地质时期和至今，动植物群落的聚集和分解的模式和因果过程是什么？这个项目将为人类影响之前地球生态系统的变化提供新的视角，使我们能够比较现在正在发生的事情，并为我们提供一些关于未来可能发生的事情的想法。该研究协调网络将使用新生态和古生态数据和见解，为群落组装和拆卸提供更全面的模型。这个项目还将产生一本新的综合书籍《古生态学基础》，它将把生态学理论与古生物学记录结合起来，并建立一个不同时空尺度上不同陆地植物和动物生态群落的公共数据库。这个网络的其他更广泛的影响包括研究经验和对本科生和研究生的培训，以及通过新的国家自然历史博物馆、深度时间展览和通过游戏和教师手册向公众推广生态学和古生态学之间联系的教学在公立学校。

Understanding the structure, function, and dynamics of ecosystems is a central goal of ecological research. Paleo-biologists are engaged in parallel efforts to reconstruct past ecological communities using associations of fossil plants and animals. Modern ecology knows a lot about how the individual components of ecological systems operate in the present day, but considerably less about the linkages that hold together communities and ecosystems over long periods of time. Paleo-ecological studies in deep time (from thousands of years to several hundred million years ago) can reveal how communities shift over evolutionary time and how they respond to major environmental changes. This project will establish a Research Coordination Network to bring together ecologists and paleo-biologists in an effort to bridge the gap between ecology and paleoecology and apply modern ecological theory to gain in-depth understanding of land-based faunas and floras over the past 400 million years. The network resources and expertise will focus on the following central question: What are the patterns and causal processes of animal and plant community assembly and disassembly over geological time and up to the present-day? This project will generate new perspectives on change in the planet's ecosystems before human impact, allow us to compare what is happening now, and give us some ideas about what may happen in the future.This Research Coordination Network will produce a more comprehensive model for community assembly and disassembly that uses both neo- and paleo-ecological data and insights. This project will also produce a new synthetic book, Foundations of Paleoecology, which will integrate ecological theory with the paleo-biology record, and a public database of ecological communities of different land plants and animals over different scales of space and time. Additional broader impacts from this network include research experience and training of undergraduates and graduate students, and outreach to the general public through the new National Museum of Natural History, Deep Time exhibit and through games and teacher manuals to promote the teaching of linkages between ecology and paleoecology in public schools.