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

了解小规模实验如何解释广泛的模式是生态学领域的一个重大挑战。虽然实验揭示了机制，但如果这些机制不能解释自然界的大规模模式，那么它们的价值就不确定了。其中一个常见的模式是，广泛分布的物种往往是丰富的，而具有有限分布的物种往往是罕见的。这个项目，从一个早期的职业调查，追求一种新的方法来确定个人如何使用资源可以解释这种模式。该项目将把收集到的个人实验数据与新模型相结合，将个人结果扩展到群体，然后扩展到大型景观的社区。这项研究将吸引来自怀俄明州的本科生，他们将与肯尼亚学生沿着参与研究，并通过在肯尼亚进行的实验来利用目前的NSF支持。研究结果将有助于史密森学会的稀树草原植物参考图书馆，该图书馆与肯尼亚的博物馆共享。该项目的数据将公开提供。 丰度和占有率之间的相关性在生态学中是最普遍的：具有广泛分布的物种往往在当地丰富，而那些具有限制分布的物种往往在当地稀少。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设已被证明非常难以验证。本项目通过特别关注个人的饮食广度来追求资源广度假设。资源利用将通过对小型食草哺乳动物物种丰富的群体中的粪便DNA进行测序来量化。个人消费者资源的相互作用将被整合的健身和人口增长的估计组成物种在大规模的社区，以辨别是否生态通才更丰富的地方，他们共同发生的饮食专家，并确定通过生态通才是体现在生存和招聘率的途径。正在进行的草食动物排除实验提供了一个背景下，不断变化的资源动态，在其中一个行业协会的小型哺乳动物进行了密集监测，因此一个很好的机会来测试的资源呼吸假说。

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.