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。这个项目将促进我们对这些模式如何形成以及它们如何影响诸如水和养分等资源以及动植物的丰度和分布的理解。研究将把在肯尼亚热带稀树草原的实地实验研究与数学模型相结合，以调查土栖白蚁在广大地区形成的大土丘的规律模式的原因和后果。研究人员将研究空间白蚁群落的物理和生物机制，以及土丘景观如何塑造食物网，并决定系统的整体生产力和稳定性。这个项目预期将增加管理牧地生态系统的科学基础，其中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。项目数据将免费提供给公众。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这项研究的新教学单元，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.