EAGER: The ecosystem consequences of management disturbances: examining the community-trait-function relationships of consumers in a restored grassland

生态系统执行广泛的过程，包括造福人类的服务，如提供清洁的空气、水、作物授粉和肥沃的土壤。 这些过程依赖于不同的植物、动物和其他具有各种特征的生物群落--植物和动物的特征决定了它们在生态系统中的相互作用。改变社区的人类活动，如生态系统退化和恢复，有可能改变生态系统进程。 本项目将研究在恢复的草原上的管理行动如何塑造植物和动物群落的物种和特征组成以及这些物种驱动的生态系统过程。 研究结果将为土地管理者如何最大限度地发挥生态系统对自然和社会的惠益提供指导。 与研究现场管理人员的合作将允许教育和推广机会，以公众谁访问该网站，包括类实地考察，该项目将培训研究生和本科生在实践和科学交流。 该项目将研究社区和生态系统功能的变化，在环境方面的影响，导致三个大规模的管理行动：重新引入大型食草动物（野牛），大型捕食者的清除，并在恢复高草草原规定的火灾的应用。 它将通过将消费者纳入整个食物网的相互作用并扩展到相关的景观规模来促进社区-性状-功能关系的知识。 研究人员将在两个食物网模块中测量管理行动引起的性状和生态系统功能变化。 第一个模块包括植物和食草动物（昆虫和小型哺乳动物）及其对初级生产力和凋落物分解的影响，通过植物性状和食草动物觅食专业化的变化，以及食草动物使用各种食物资源的程度（生态位宽度），通过稳定同位素测量。 第二个模块是粪便分解者及其通过形态学、觅食策略和物候学的变化对土壤过程（碳和氮循环和分解速率）的影响。 研究结果将揭示群落的特征组成如何调节环境背景和生态系统功能之间的关系。 最终，这项研究将为操纵消费者群体的物种和特征组成的研究奠定基础。 此外，通过在恢复的系统中与管理人员合作开展这项工作，它有助于关闭研究人员和自然资源管理人员之间的循环。

Ecosystems carry out a wide range of processes, including services that benefit people such as providing clean air, water, pollination of crops, and productive soils. These processes depend on diverse communities of plants, animals, and other organisms with a wide variety of traits - characteristics of plants and animals that shape how they interact in ecosystems. Human activities that shift communities, such as ecosystem degradation and restoration, have the potential to alter ecosystem processes. This project will examine how management actions in a restored grassland shape the species and trait compositions of plant and animal communities and the ecosystem processes that these species drive. Results will provide guidance on how land managers can maximize the benefits of ecosystems to nature and to society. Collaborations with the research site managers will allow education and outreach opportunities to members of the public who visit the site, including class field trips, and the project will train both graduate and undergraduate students in the practice and communication of science. This project will examine the community and ecosystem function consequences of changes in environmental context resulting from three landscape-scale management actions: reintroduction of megaherbivore grazers (bison), large predator removal, and application of prescribed fires in restored tallgrass prairies. It will advance knowledge of community-trait-function relationships by including consumers in interactions spanning entire food webs and expanding to a relevant landscape scale. Researchers will measure both traits and ecosystem function changes resulting from management actions in two food web modules. The first module includes plants and herbivores (insect and small mammal) and their impacts on primary productivity and litter decomposition through changes in plant traits and herbivore foraging specialization and the degree to which herbivores use a wide variety of food resources (niche breadth) as measured by stable isotopes. The second module is dung decomposers and their effects on soil processes (carbon and nitrogen cycling and decomposition rates) through changes in morphology, foraging strategies, and phenology. Results will reveal how the trait composition of communities mediates the relationship between environmental context and ecosystem function. Ultimately this research will lay the groundwork for studies manipulating the species- and trait-composition of consumer communities. Further, by performing this work in a restored system and in concert with managers, it helps close the loop between researchers and natural resource managers.