OPUS: Historical contingency in community assembly

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Local communities of plants and animals, such as those found on islands or in lakes, contain many species. These species affect one another through various types of interactions, including predation, competition, and various types of mutually beneficial relationships. Despite extensive research over the past century, ecologists still find it hard to explain how these interactions influence which species are able to live together in a local community. An overlooked factor may be the history of community assembly -- the order in which species arrive into a newly available habitat. Growing evidence suggests that, indeed, the way species affect one another in communities often depends on the order in which they arrive into the community. Improved knowledge of these historical effects will be useful for solving a range of pressing issues. Examples include environmental challenges such as ecosystem restoration under climate change, agricultural solutions such as biological control against pests that interact with multiple species, and medical problems such as the management of gut microbial communities influencing human health. The researcher will write a book that integrates findings from his work on this topic over the past 15 years. In this book, a new conceptual framework will be developed that can be used to make general predictions about when the order in which species arrive in a local community matters and when it does not.To achieve a new synthesis in the book, the investigator will integrate four emerging views that replace traditional assumptions about community assembly: (1) the regional pool of species that can potentially colonize newly available local communities should be viewed as dynamic, not static; (2) historical contingency influences not just the structure, but also the functioning of communities; (3) in many cases, communities are in long-lasting transient states that are qualitatively different from their final stable states; and (4) ecological and evolutionary processes operate at the same time scale to influence local population dynamics. The book will be the main broader impact product of this project. A secondary broader impact will be student training. Over the past 6 years, the investigator has designed and taught a new undergraduate course that integrates research and education. In this course, which is taken by about 120 students each year, the investigator uses communities of nectar-inhabiting microorganisms as a study system for inquiry-based education. In addition to being the focus of this teaching, these microbial communities have been the investigator's primary research subject to ask questions about community assembly and historical contingency. Therefore, this research-education integration effort is closely linked to the subject of the book. The opportunity to synthesize current knowledge on community assembly in a broad context will help the investigator to improve and widen the knowledge base that he can use in teaching the course.