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

热带森林包含了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狩猎的严重威胁。这个项目试图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收集有关猎人决策行为的详细信息，包括猎人动机、猎物偏好和搜索策略，来补充正在进行的研究。狩猎的动机--无论是为了谋生、商业市场还是娱乐--可以决定是否可能发生过度狩猎。加强对狩猎行为的了解，结合不同物种的空间分布模式，将改善对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低收入农村人口获得自然资源这两个相互矛盾的目标。该项目将侧重于与当地伙伴机构的能力建设和知识交流，范围从保护区管理到与当地中国和老挝研究生和教师的研究站。它将支持将社会科学调查与现有实地研究相结合，以解决日益严重的问题，从而大大有助于培养研究生。一项以猎人和一系列热带鸟类为重点的实地研究将在热带东亚进行，范围从广泛分布和很少被猎杀的物种到那些被大量猎杀并只出现在孤立碎片中的物种。研究人员假设，目前的模型未能管理被剥削的种群，是因为狩猎发生在多猎物的背景下。常见的、不受保护的猎物物种可以补贴稀有物种的开发，这一现象被称为机会主义开发。研究人员将调整多物种竞争和捕食模型，以包括人类狩猎，从而为过度开发的脆弱性提供新的预测因子。点数样带将描述中国西南部和老挝北部保护区内和周围鸟类物种的丰度和分布格局。将对居住在保护区5公里以内的村民进行家庭访谈，以评估猎人的行为动机，以及狩猎技巧和强度。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.