Predator control of carrion resources and associated ecological heterogeneity

顶端捕食者在生态系统中扮演的角色在研究人员和野生动物管理者中仍存在争议。这个项目将研究这些捕食者的一个新角色，那就是它们通过控制腐肉资源来产生生物活动热点的能力。了解顶端捕食者的不同功能将有助于可持续的荒野管理，直接提高公民对荒野和野生动物娱乐的享受和欣赏。该项目还将提高公众对顶端捕食者重要性的认识，提高社会对荒野和野生动物保护的认识。维护腐肉资源的努力将有助于维持其他物种和生态系统的健康。调查人员将与美国国家公园的野生动物管理人员合作，开发用于推广和解释的教育地图。动物遗骸和在身体现场创造的拾荒者活动在视觉上吸引着所有年龄段的学生。调查人员将与密歇根西部上半岛科学、数学和环境教育中心合作，创建一个地区性远程相机借阅库和教案，以记录身体现场的生物活动。这些活动将使K-12教育工作者和学生参与腐肉生态领域的研究。腐肉存在于所有生态区。它代表着重要的能量流动和营养限制的瓶颈，具有深远的生态和进化后果。腐肉是各种群落的关键资源，它强烈影响着清道夫协会、生物多样性的维持和基本的生态过程。这项研究将调查捕食在控制腐肉资源、塑造身体分布以及产生生物地球化学和群落活动的变化马赛克方面所起的鲜为人知的作用。四个陆地生态系统将讨论两组相互关联的问题：1)腐肉衍生的影响如何在多个生态系统和不同的捕食者-猎物群落中变化？2)捕食如何影响腐肉在空间和时间上的分布？实验和实地研究将揭示关键生物群的地上和地下腐肉效应。这一理解将与身体的空间记录相结合，以检查捕食者对多个尺度上腐肉资源的控制。来自实验、实地研究和身体记录的数据将被纳入空间模型，以检查捕食者-腐肉动态以及与死亡相比对腐肉资源流动的捕食控制。焦点系统跨越一系列生态系统和捕食者-猎物多样性，将产生一般模式，并确定在捕食者对生物群落腐肉资源的控制方面的明显差异。在研究捕食者对腐肉资源的控制方面，这项工作既解决了生态学中对群落营养控制机制和生态系统结构的基本关注，又探索了一个新的概念，可以增加对捕食者生态作用的全面看法。

The roles that apex predators play in ecosystems are still debated among researchers and wildlife managers. This project will examine a novel role for these predators, which is their ability to generate hotspots of biological activity by controlling carrion resources. Understanding the diverse functions of apex predators will contribute to sustainable wilderness management, directly enhancing citizen enjoyment and appreciation of wilderness and wildlife for recreation. The project will also advance public awareness of the importance of apex predators, improving societal awareness of wilderness and wildlife preservation. Efforts to maintain carrion resources will help to sustain other species and ecosystem health. The investigators will work with wildlife managers in US National Parks to develop educational maps for outreach and interpretation. Animal remains and scavenger activity created at carcass sites are visually captivating to students of all ages. Investigators will partner with the Western Upper Peninsula Michigan Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education to create a regional remote camera lending depot and lesson plans for recording biological activity at carcass sites. These activities will engage K-12 educators and students in the field of carrion ecology.Carrion occurs in all biomes. It represents a bottleneck in the vital flow of energy and limiting nutrients with profound ecological and evolutionary consequences. Carrion constitutes a critical resource for a variety of communities and it strongly affects scavenger guilds, the maintenance of biodiversity, and fundamental ecological processes. This research will investigate the poorly understood role of predation in controlling carrion resources, shaping carcass distributions, and generating a shifting mosaic of biogeochemical and community activity. Two interrelated sets of questions will be addressed across four terrestrial ecosystems: 1) How do carrion-derived effects vary across multiple ecosystems and across a diversity of predator-prey communities? And 2) How does predation influence carrion distribution across space and time? Experiments and field studies will reveal above and belowground carrion effects across key biomes. This understanding will be coupled with spatial records of carcasses to examine predator control of carrion resources across multiple scales. Data from experiments, field studies and carcass records will be incorporated into spatial models to examine predator-carrion dynamics and predation controls over carrion resource flow compared to die-offs. The focal systems span a range of ecosystems and predator-prey diversity, and will yield both general patterns and identify distinct differences in predator control of carrion resources across biomes. In examining predator control of carrion resources, this work addresses both the fundamental focus in ecology on mechanisms of trophic control of community and ecosystem structure and explores a novel concept that can add to a comprehensive view of the ecological role of predators.