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主要挑战。虽然实验揭示了机制，但如果这些机制不能解释表征自然世界的大规模模式，它们的价值就不确定了。一种常见的模式是，广泛分布的物种往往很丰富，而分布有限的物种往往很罕见。这个项目，从一个早期的职业研究者，追求一种新的方法来确定个人如何利用资源来解释这种模式。该项目将把在个人身上收集的实验数据与新模型结合起来，将个人结果扩展到人口群体，然后扩展到大范围内的社区。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一起参与研究，并利用目前在肯尼亚进行的一项实验来利用国家科学基金会的支持。研究结果将用于史密森学会的稀树草原植物参考图书馆，该图书馆将与肯尼亚的博物馆共享。该项目的数据将公开。在生态学中，丰度和占用率之间的相关性是最普遍的：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少。长期以来，这种模式一直吸引着生态学家，但为解释这种模式而提出的假说被证明非常难以验证。该项目通过特别关注个体的饮食广度来追求资源广度假说。资源利用将通过测序粪便DNA在一个物种丰富的小，食草哺乳动物协会量化。个体消费者-资源相互作用将与大规模群落中组成物种的适应度和种群增长估计相结合，以辨别生态通才在与饮食专家共存的地方是否更丰富，并确定生态通才在生存和招募率中表现出来的途径。正在进行的食草动物排除实验提供了资源动态变化的背景，在此背景下，对一群小型哺乳动物进行了密集监测，因此是测试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.