An integrative approach to quantifying the response of ecological assemblages to anthropogenic stressors

森林砍伐、气候变化、栖息地破碎化和入侵物种等生态压力因素在世界各地普遍存在，部分原因可能是人类活动。检测和量化这些压力对物种群落的影响的能力对于维护和管理生物多样性和生态系统的健康至关重要。然而，鉴于生物多样性数据的多元性和多方面性，评估人类活动对这些物种群落的影响是一个具有挑战性的问题。物种不仅在其分类身份上不同，而且在其丰度、进化历史以及它们在生态系统中的作用和功能上也不同。预测和了解物种群落如何因人为变化而改变，以及新的群落如何发挥作用，是维持生物多样性和生态系统功能的关键。该项目旨在开发一种计算方法，用于量化人类活动对生态系统的影响。这些工具的应用，以紧迫的生态问题将产生急需的信息，生物群落是如何应对多种全球重要的人为stressorsThis项目的目的是开发新的计算方法，整合多个来源的生物多样性信息，以划定物种组合内的组成单位（从这里开始定义为组成社区）和量化的影响，人为的压力。该项目有两个具体目标。第一种方法是将系统发育信息与物种相互作用和组成数据相结合，以确定异质生物多样性数据中生态组合内的组成群落。第二是将这些综合方法应用于不同的数据集，以表征这些组成社区对人为压力的响应的基础上的生态组合的组成变化。有关此项目的更多信息，请访问PI的实验室页面http://denisvalle.weebly.com/。

Ecological stressors such as deforestation, climate change, habitat fragmentation, and invasive species are pervasive throughout the world and can be driven in part by human (anthropogenic) activity. The ability to detect and quantify the impact of these stressors on species communities is critical for maintaining and managing biodiversity and the health of ecosystems. The assessment of anthropogenic impacts on these species communities, however, is a challenging problem given the multivariate nature and multiple facets of biodiversity data. Species differ not only in their taxonomic identities but also in their abundances, evolutionary history, and their role and function in ecosystems. Predicting and understanding how species communities are altered by anthropogenic change and how novel communities function is key to sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem function. This project aims to develop a computational approach for quantifying anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems. The application of these tools to pressing ecological questions will generate much needed information regarding how biological communities are responding to multiple globally important anthropogenic stressorsThis project aims to develop new computational methods that integrate multiple sources of biodiversity information to delineate constituent units within species assemblages (defined from here onwards as component communities) and quantify the impact of anthropogenic stressors. The project has two specific aims. The first is to integrate phylogenetic information with species interaction and composition data to identify component communities within ecological assemblages in heterogeneous biodiversity data. The second is to apply these integrative methods to diverse datasets to characterize the changes in composition of ecological assemblages based on responses of these component communities to anthropogenic stressors. For more information on this project visit the PI's lab page at http://denisvalle.weebly.com/.