DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Apparent competition or anthropogenic over-harvest: hunting in a multi-species context and its impact on species extinctions in Tropical East Asia

热带森林包含着世界上大多数鸟类和哺乳动物物种，其中许多物种受到过度捕猎的严重威胁。该项目旨在了解栖息地丧失和狩猎如何协同影响脊椎动物群落。博士论文改进基金将通过支持猎人决策行为的详细信息收集来补充正在进行的研究，包括猎人的动机、猎物偏好和搜索策略。狩猎的动机——无论是为了维持生计、商业市场还是娱乐——可以决定是否可能发生过度狩猎。提高对狩猎行为的理解，结合不同物种的空间分布模式，将改善整个热带地区以及其他低治理地区的狩猎管理。这些地区往往致力于保护生物多样性和使低收入农村人口获得自然资源这两个相互冲突的目标。该项目将侧重于与当地伙伴机构的能力建设和知识交流，从保护区管理到由当地中国和老挝研究生和教师组成的研究站。通过支持将社会科学调查与现有的实地研究结合起来，以解决日益严重的问题，它将对培养研究生作出重大贡献。将在东亚热带地区进行一项实地研究，重点是猎人和一套热带鸟类，从广泛分布和很少被捕杀的物种到被大量捕杀和只在孤立的片断中出现的物种。研究人员认为，当前模型在管理被剥削种群方面的失败，是由于狩猎发生在一个有多个猎物的环境中。常见的、未受保护的猎物物种可以补贴对稀有物种的剥削，这种现象被称为机会主义剥削。研究人员将调整多物种竞争和捕食模型，以纳入人为狩猎，从而为过度开发的脆弱性提供新的预测指标。点计数样带将描述中国西南和老挝北部保护区内及其周围鸟类的丰度和分布格局。将对居住在保护区5公里范围内的村民进行入户访谈，以评估猎人的行为动机、狩猎技术和强度。实地调查数据将为多物种狩猎的数学模型提供信息，以更好地了解如何保护热带多样性。

Tropical forests contain most of the world's bird and mammal species, many of which are heavily threatened by overhunting. This project seeks to understand how habitat loss and hunting synergistically affect vertebrate communities. Doctoral Dissertation Improvement funds will complement ongoing research by supporting the collection of detailed information on hunter decision-making behavior, including hunter motivations, their prey preferences, and their searching strategies. The motivation for hunting - whether for subsistence livelihood, commercial markets, or recreation - can determine whether or not excessive hunting is likely to occur. Improved understanding of hunting behavior, in combination with spatial distribution patterns of different species, will improve management of hunting throughout the tropics, as well as in other low-governance areas. Such areas are often committed to the conflicting goals of biodiversity preservation and access by low-income rural populations to natural resources. The project will focus on capacity building and knowledge exchange with local partner institutions, ranging from protected area administration to research stations with local Chinese and Laotian graduate students and faculty. It will contribute significantly to training a graduate student by supporting the integration of social science surveys with existing field research to address an increasing problem. A field study focusing on hunters and a suite of tropical bird species, ranging from species that are widely distributed and rarely hunted to those that have been heavily hunted and occur only in isolated fragments, will be conducted in Tropical East Asia. The investigators posit that the failure of current models to manage exploited populations results from the fact that hunting occurs in a multi-prey context. Common, unprotected prey species can subsidize the exploitation of rare species, a phenomenon called opportunistic exploitation. The researchers will adapt multi-species competition and predation models to include anthropogenic hunting, thereby offering novel predictors for vulnerability to over-exploitation. Point count transects will describe the abundance and distribution patterns of avian species within and around protected areas in Southwest China and Northern Laos. Household interviews of villagers living within 5km of protected areas will be conducted to assess hunter behavioral motivations, and hunting techniques and intensity. The field survey data will inform a mathematical model of multi-species hunting to better understand how to conserve tropical diversity.