EAGER-NEON: 20 Year Dynamics of North American Ant Communities: Evaluating the Role of Climate and Biogeochemistry on Ecological Change

蚂蚁是地球上数量最多的昆虫之一。蚂蚁搅动土壤，使尸体腐烂，抑制（有时还繁殖）害虫，它们本身就是我们最有害的害虫。蚂蚁是外温动物（即，冷血），这意味着蚁群的健康和活动部分取决于天气。反过来，气候是随着时间的推移观察到的天气，大量的证据表明气候正在变化.这项研究通过探索美国气候变化如何影响蚂蚁的健康和活动，以及蚂蚁物种的变化如何影响蚂蚁影响的许多物种，解决了生态学中的一项关键任务。这项研究解决了一个普遍存在的问题：要记录生态变化，首先必须对生态系统曾经的方式进行详细的历史记录。这样的记录是罕见的。这项研究通过重新访问大约20年前首次抽样的来自美国各地的34个蚂蚁社区来填补这一知识空白。当时，这些蚂蚁研究代表了这一重要昆虫群体的丰富性和多样性的最佳全球快照。这第二张高分辨率的快照将产生前所未有的34，20年的蚂蚁群落轨迹。 当与最新的气候趋势和生态理论相匹配时，该作品将描绘出全国生态群落如何变化的首批图片之一。这些数据将使生态学家能够改进动物如何应对气候变化的预测，并将启动新生的国家生态观测网络的此类努力。 本研究重新采样34蚂蚁横断面的30平方米的地块，最初在1994年至1995年在北美。这些网站包括或匹配的新生氖网络。由此产生的蚂蚁丰度和多样性的20年轨迹将用于测试三个理论：热适应（热生态学的主导模型，假定热耐受性跟踪气候平均值和变化）;生物地球化学能力（一种新的假设，将生物地球化学与磷（P）的组织浓度联系起来，富含P的组织增强了耐热性）;物种能量理论（一种宏观生态学的主导模型，在气候、丰度和多样性之间建立了机械联系）。它在人口规模上检验这些假设（即，物种种群的耐热性和动态变化是否可预测？），跨物种（平均物种表现如何变化？），并在整个群落中求和（生态系统中蚂蚁的活动和丰度的净变化是多少？）。这些样本将与地面甲虫陷阱的氖副渔获物进行校准，以将历史与未来的社区轨迹结合起来。

Ants are one of the most abundant insects on Earth. Ants churn the soil, scavenge the dead, suppress (and sometimes propagate) pests, and are themselves some of our most pernicious pests. Ants are ectotherms (i.e., cold-blooded), which means that the health and activity of an ant colony depends in part on the weather. Climate, in turn, is weather observed over time, and abundance evidence shows that climate is changing. This research addresses a key task in ecology by exploring how changing climate across the U.S. will impact the health and activity of ants and, by extension, how shifts in ant species may impact the many species that ants influence. The research tackles a widespread problem: that to document ecological change one must first have detailed historical records of the way ecosystems once were. Such records are rare. This research fills that knowledge gap by revisiting 34 ant communities from across the United States that were first sampled approximately 20 years ago. At the time, those ant studies represented the best global snapshot of the abundance and diversity of this important insect group. This second, high-resolution snapshot will generate an unprecedented 34, 20-year trajectories of ant communities. When matched to the latest climate trends and ecological theory, the work will paint one of the first pictures of how ecological communities are changing nation-wide. These data will allow ecologists to refine the predictions of how animals respond to climate change, and will jump-start such efforts by the nascent National Ecological Observatory Network. This research resamples 34 ant transects of 30 m2 plots from across North America that were originally sampled in 1994-95. The sites include or are matched to those of the nascent NEON network. The resulting 20-year trajectories of ant abundance and diversity will be used to tests three theories: Thermal Adaptation (the dominant model of thermal ecology which posits that thermal tolerance tracks climate means and variability); Biogeochemical Competence (a new hypothesis that links biogeochemistry to tissue concentrations of phosphorus (P), with P-rich tissue enhancing thermal tolerance); and Species Energy Theory (a dominant model of macroecology that builds mechanistic links between climate, abundance, and diversity). It tests these hypotheses at the population scale (i.e., do populations of species vary predictably in their thermal tolerance and dynamics?), across species (how does the mean species performance vary?), and summed across whole communities (what is the net change in the activity and abundance of ants in an ecosystem?). These samples will be calibrated with NEON by-catch of ground beetle pitfall traps to couple historical with future community trajectories.