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，拾取死人，抑制(有时还会繁殖)害虫，它们本身就是我们最有害的害虫。蚂蚁是冷血动物，这意味着蚂蚁群体的健康和活动在一定程度上取决于天气。反过来，气候是随着时间的推移而观察到的天气，而且大量证据表明气候正在变化。这项研究通过探索美国各地气候变化将如何影响蚂蚁的健康和活动，进而探索蚂蚁物种的变化可能如何影响受蚂蚁影响的许多物种，来解决生态学中的一个关键任务。这项研究解决了一个普遍存在的问题：要记录生态变化，首先必须有生态系统曾经的详细历史记录。这样的记录很少见。这项研究通过重新访问来自美国各地的34个蚂蚁群落来填补这一知识空白，这些群落在大约20年前首次抽样。当时，这些蚂蚁研究代表了这一重要昆虫群体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生成史无前例的蚂蚁群落34年、20年的轨迹。当与最新的气候趋势和生态理论相匹配时，这项工作将描绘出全国范围内生态社区如何变化的首批图景之一。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。这项研究对北美34个蚂蚁样带30平方米的样地进行了重新抽样，这些样地最初是在1994-95年进行抽样的。这些网站包括或与新生霓虹灯网络的网站相匹配。由此产生的20年蚂蚁丰度和多样性轨迹将被用来测试三种理论：热适应(热生态学的主导模型，假定热耐性跟踪气候均值和变异性)；生物地球化学能力(一种新的假说，将生物地球化学与组织中磷的浓度(P)联系起来，富含磷的组织提高热耐性)；物种能量理论(在气候、丰度和多样性之间建立机械联系的主导宏观生态学模型)。它在种群规模上(即，物种种群在耐热性和动态方面是否存在可预测的差异？)、跨物种(平均物种性能如何变化？)和整个群落(生态系统中蚂蚁活动和丰度的净变化是什么？)来检验这些假设。这些样本将与地面甲虫陷阱陷阱的霓虹灯副捕获物进行校准，以将历史和未来的群落轨迹结合起来。

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.