Collaborative Research: Causes and consequences of regular spatial patterning in foundation species: theoretical development and experimental tests in an African savanna

新的卫星图像显示，许多自然生态系统形成了惊人的统一模式。该项目将促进我们对这些模式如何形成以及它们如何影响水和营养素等资源以及植物和动物的丰度和分布的理解。 研究工作将把肯尼亚热带稀树草原的联合收割机试验性实地研究与数学模型结合起来，以调查土栖白蚁在大面积地区形成大土丘的规律性模式的原因和后果。 研究人员将调查空间白蚁殖民地的物理和生物机制，以及土堆景观如何塑造食物网并决定系统的整体生产力和稳定性。预计该项目将增加管理牧场生态系统的科学基础，因为牧场生态系统的自组织模式可能是生态退化的重要指标和景观恢复的组成部分。项目数据将免费向公众提供。 该项目还将以多种方式促进科学教育。 一名博士后研究员和一些本科生，包括来自代表性不足群体的学生，将直接参与实地研究。 更多的学生将受益于基于研究的新教学单元，并将其添加到美国研究人员所在大学的课程中。

New satellite imagery has revealed that many natural ecological systems form surprisingly uniform patterns. This project will advance our understanding about how these patterns form and how they affect resources such as water and nutrients and the abundance and distribution of plants and animals. Research will combine experimental field studies in tropical savanna in Kenya with mathematical modeling to investigate the causes and consequences of the regular pattern of large mounds formed over wide areas by soil-dwelling termites. Researchers will investigate the physical and biological mechanisms that space termite colonies, and how the mounded landscape shapes food webs and determines overall productivity and stability of the system. This project is expected to add to the scientific basis for managing rangeland ecosystems, where self-organized patterns may be important indicators of ecological degradation and components of landscape restoration. Project data will be made freely available to the public. The project will also contribute to science education in multiple ways. A post-doctoral researcher and a number of undergraduate students, including students from underrepresented groups, will participate first-hand in the field research. Many more students will benefit from new instructional units based on the research and added to the curricula at the home universities of the researchers in the U.S.