What Stabilizes Population Dynamics in Nature? A New Framework for Quantifying the in situ Strength and Nonlinearity of Species Interactions

是什么稳定了自然界的种群动态？

• 批准号: 1353827
• 负责人: Mark Novak
• 金额: $ 49万
• 依托单位: Oregon State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-06-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1353827&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: What; Stabilizes; Population; Dynamics; Nature

A fundamental question in ecology is how interactions among species (e.g. predator-prey) cause some species to exhibit cyclic population fluctuations over time while for other species they do not. An understanding of these mechanisms is necessary in order to forecast how species and their ecosystems will respond to environmental perturbations, including habitat loss and climate change. This research project will develop new methods and statistical analyses that will be applied to stream communities of the Pacific Northwest. The investigators will test hypotheses regarding when species populations will cycle in abundance. Current theory can explain only the most simplistic case of specialist predator species that feed on only one or a few prey species. However, most species in nature are generalists embedded in complex networks of species interactions. This limitation is widely acknowledged as a significant problem in the development of resource management and conservation practices. This work promises to advance general ecological theory and resolve a long standing puzzle concerning stability of predator-prey interactions in nature. Results of this project will improve our ability to forecast species responses to environmental disturbances, which is important in wildlife management and conservation. This project also will support the mentoring, and research training of undergraduate and graduate students, and a postdoctoral researcher. Broader involvement with Oregon's local communities will be achieved through an extensive collaboration with Oregon State University's elementary school partnership program, which provides science and math enrichment for elementary school students and professional development for their teachers in order to increase the number of underrepresented and educationally underserved students that go on to pursue careers in science, math, health, engineering, and education.This research will develop a new class of observational methods for estimating the strength of predator-prey interactions in species-rich systems. Observational and experimental implementations of the approach in stream communities of the Andrews Experimental Forest Long Term Ecological Research site will be used to quantitatively compare the degree to which prey-dependent, consumer-dependent and adaptive-foraging processes contribute to empirical levels of interaction nonlinearity. Empirically-derived insights will be integrated into abstracted mathematical models to develop general theory regarding the dynamics of specialist and generalist consumers. This research promises significant advances in our conceptual and applied understanding of the mechanisms by which predator-prey interactions regulate the dynamics of species-rich communities. The novel simplicity and broad applicability of the observational approach to be developed here promises a transformative new way to bridge mathematical theory and empirical data.

生态学中的一个基本问题是物种之间的相互作用（例如捕食者与猎物）如何导致某些物种随着时间的推移表现出周期性的种群波动，而其他物种则不会。为了预测物种及其生态系统将如何应对环境扰动（包括栖息地丧失和气候变化），有必要了解这些机制。该研究项目将开发新的方法和统计分析，应用于太平洋西北地区的河流社区。研究人员将测试有关物种种群何时会大量循环的假设。目前的理论只能解释仅以一种或几种猎物物种为食的专业捕食者物种的最简单的情况。然而，自然界中的大多数物种都是嵌入在复杂的物种相互作用网络中的通才。这种限制被广泛认为是资源管理和保护实践发展中的一个重大问题。这项工作有望推进一般生态理论，并解决有关自然界捕食者与猎物相互作用稳定性的长期难题。该项目的结果将提高我们预测物种对环境干扰的反应的能力，这对于野生动物管理和保护非常重要。该项目还将支持本科生、研究生以及博士后研究员的指导和研究培训。通过与俄勒冈州立大学的小学合作伙伴计划的广泛合作，将实现对俄勒冈州当地社区的更广泛参与，该计划为小学生提供科学和数学丰富课程，并为教师提供专业发展，以增加代表性不足和教育服务不足的学生的数量，让他们继续从事科学、数学、健康、工程和教育领域的职业。这项研究将开发一类新的观察方法来估计实力 物种丰富的系统中捕食者与被捕食者的相互作用。该方法在安德鲁斯实验森林长期生态研究站点的溪流群落中的观察和实验实施将用于定量比较猎物依赖、消费者依赖和适应性觅食过程对相互作用非线性经验水平的贡献程度。经验得出的见解将被整合到抽象的数学模型中，以发展有关专业消费者和通才消费者动态的一般理论。这项研究有望在我们对捕食者-猎物相互作用调节物种丰富群落动态的机制的概念和应用理解方面取得重大进展。这里要开发的观察方法新颖的简单性和广泛的适用性有望提供一种连接数学理论和经验数据的变革性新方法。