DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Ecological and evolutionary dynamics in temporally autocorrelated landscapes

人类的增长和发展加剧了物种如何应对不断变化的环境条件的不确定性，这加剧了世界各地自然景观的碎片化。该项目将一种新的时空环境变化的理论方法与栖息地碎片化的实验操作相结合，以考察大空间尺度上的灭绝风险。它通过为生态过程提供更现实的时空背景，挑战了目前对环境变化和物种灭绝风险之间关系的理解。当环境变化在空间上分离的离散种群中相似或相关时，这种变化可以使种群波动同步，从而增加灭绝的风险。研究人员最近证明，种群之间在环境相关性程度上的差异会降低种群的同步性。这个项目将使用实验室实验来检验这些新的发现，这些实验改变了原生动物和细菌的离散种群的扩散速度和环境动力学。该项目将加强对有前途的博士生的培养。这项研究还通过耶鲁大学皮博迪博物馆正在进行的课外项目，为年轻科学家提供了在数学和实验生态学方面进行跨学科培训的独特机会。同时，博士生将获得指导这些年轻的、初级研究人员的经验。研究人员还将开发一个在线演示，利用这项研究的结果来解释环境变化和人口对这种变化的反应之间的关系。该演示将允许普通用户操纵诸如增长率、分散率和环境变化等因素，以了解它们对种群动态的影响。

Uncertainty about how species respond to changing environmental conditions is exacerbated by human growth and development, which is increasing the fragmentation of natural landscapes all over the world. This project combines a new theoretical approach to environmental variation in space and time with experimental manipulation of habitat fragmentation to examine extinction risk at large spatial scales. It challenges current understanding of the relationship between environmental variation and extinction risk by providing a more realistic spatio-temporal context for ecological processes. When environmental change is similar, or correlated, among discrete populations that are separated spatially, this change can synchronize population fluctuations, enhancing the risk of extinction. The investigators have recently demonstrated that differences among populations in the degree of environmental correlations reduce population synchrony. This project will test these novel findings using laboratory experiments that vary dispersal rates and environmental dynamics in discrete populations of protists and bacteria. This project will enhance the training of a promising doctoral student. The research also provides unique opportunities for young scientists for cross-disciplinary training in mathematics and experimental ecology through an ongoing after-school program run by the Yale University Peabody Museum. Simultaneously, the doctoral student will gain experience mentoring these younger, incipient researchers. The investigators will also develop an on-line demonstration that uses results from this research to explain the relationships between environmental change and population responses to this change. The demonstration will allow general users to manipulate factors such as growth rate, dispersal rate, and environmental change to understand the effects they have on population dynamics.