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令人惊讶的统一模式。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水和营养物质以及动植物丰度和分布等资源的理解。研究将结合肯尼亚热带稀树草原的实地实验研究和数学建模，以调查土壤白蚁在大片地区形成大土丘的规律模式的原因和后果。研究人员将调查白蚁群落形成空间的物理和生物机制，以及堆积的景观如何塑造食物网，并决定系统的整体生产力和稳定性。该项目预计将增加管理牧场生态系统的科学基础，在牧场生态系统中，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。项目数据将免费向公众提供。该项目还将以多种方式为科学教育做出贡献。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，将第一手参与实地研究。更多的学生将受益于基于这项研究的新教学单位，并被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.