EAGER: Pathways to ecological generalism and the abundance-occupancy relationship in small-mammal communities

理解小规模实验如何解释广泛分布的模式是生态学领域的一大挑战。虽然实验揭示了机制，但如果这些机制不能解释自然界特有的大规模模式，它们的价值就不确定了。一种常见的模式是广布的物种往往是丰富的，而分布有限的物种往往是稀有的。这个项目来自一名早期的职业调查员，寻求一种新的方法来确定个人对资源的使用如何解释这种模式。该项目将把在个人身上收集的实验数据与新的模型结合起来，将个人结果扩展到人群，然后扩展到大片地区的社区。这项研究将吸引怀俄明州的本科生参与研究，他们将与肯尼亚学生一起参与研究，并通过在肯尼亚进行的一项实验来利用目前NSF的支持。研究结果将有助于史密森学会与肯尼亚博物馆共享的稀树草原植物参考库。该项目的数据将向公众开放。丰度和占有率之间的关系在生态学中是最普遍的：分布广泛的物种往往在当地丰富，而分布有限的物种往往在当地稀有。这种模式长期以来一直吸引着生态学家，但提出的解释它的假说被证明非常难以检验。这个项目通过特别关注个人的饮食广度来追求资源广度假说。资源利用将通过对物种丰富的小型食草性哺乳动物的粪便DNA进行测序来量化。个体消费者-资源互动将与大规模社区中组成物种的适合度和种群增长估计相结合，以辨别与饮食专家共同出现的生态多面手是否更多，并确定生态多面性在存活率和征集率中的表现途径。一项正在进行的食草动物排除实验提供了一个不断变化的资源动态的背景，在这个背景下，一群小型哺乳动物受到了密切的监控，因此是检验资源呼吸假说的绝佳机会。

Understanding how small-scale experiments explain widespread patterns is a major challenge in the field of ecology. While experiments reveal mechanisms, their value is uncertain if these mechanisms cannot account for the large-scale patterns that characterize the natural world. One such common pattern is that widespread species tend to be abundant, while species with restricted distributions are often rare. This project, from an early career investigator, pursues a novel approach to determine how resource use by individuals can explain this pattern. The project will integrate experimental data collected on individuals with new models to extend individual results to populations and then to communities across large landscapes. The research will engage undergraduate students from Wyoming, who will participate in research along with Kenyan students, and leverages current NSF support by using an ongoing experiment in Kenya. Results will contribute to a reference library of savanna plants at the Smithsonian Institution that is shared with museums in Kenya. Data from this project will be publicly available. Correlations between abundance and occupancy are among the most pervasive in ecology: species with expansive distributions tend to be locally abundant, whereas those with restricted distributions tend to be locally rare. This pattern has long captivated ecologists, but proposed hypotheses to explain it have proved very difficult to test. This project pursues the resource-breadth hypotheses by focusing specifically on dietary breadth of individuals. Resource use will be quantified by sequencing fecal DNA in a species-rich guild of small, herbivorous mammals. Individual consumer-resource interactions will be integrated with estimates of fitness and population growth for constituent species in large-scale communities to discern whether ecological generalists are more abundant where they co-occur with dietary specialists and to identify the pathways through which ecological generalism is manifested in survival and recruitment rates. An ongoing herbivore exclusion experiment provides a backdrop of shifting resource dynamics across which a guild of small mammals is intensively monitored, and thus an excellent opportunity to test the resource-breath hypothesis.