RAPID: Ant community responses to a 1000-year flooding event

RAPID：蚂蚁社区对千年一遇的洪水事件的反应

• 批准号: 1811225
• 负责人: Thomas Miller
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: William Marsh Rice University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1811225&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Ant; community; responses; 1000

Extreme weather events, such as catastrophic fires or floods, are expected to become more likely under global environmental change. Scientists have a relatively poor understanding of how such extreme events influence the abundance of plants and animals, including species that affect human well-being such as pollinators or invasive pests. Improving this scientific understanding requires that we learn from natural disasters. This project examines how extreme flooding associated with Hurricane Harvey in August 2017 affected the abundance and community composition of ants in the Big Thicket region of east Texas. This region hosts dozens of native ant species that provide valuable ecosystem services, such as decomposition and pest control, as well as noxious invasive species (fire ants and tawny crazy ants). The researchers will use "before" and "after" samples to test the hypothesis that Hurricane Harvey disrupted east Texas ant communities, favoring an increase in abundance and extent of invasive ants. The research will be conducted in coordination with the National Park Service, who hope to learn more about the ecological effects of Hurricane Harvey. The scientists will communicate their results to the public in the Texas communities of Houston and Beaumont, which were affected by fire ants and strongly affected by Harvey's floodwaters.Ecological theory suggests that the relative abundance and even presence of species in communities may be driven as much by historical contingencies associated with rare events as by filtering from average environmental conditions. Forecasts for environmental change in the 21st century include an increase in frequency of extreme events, and ecologists are increasingly called upon to predict their consequences. The researchers will study how the 1,000-year flooding associated with Hurricane Harvey modified the taxonomic and functional trait composition of Big Thicket ant communities. The researchers will leverage three years of pre-event sampling to contrast the abundance, diversity, and species composition of ant communities before and after Harvey's floodwaters. Importantly, pre-event work demonstrated that exotic ant species had begun to penetrate the intact native communities. The researchers will evaluate whether Hurricane Harvey increased opportunities for invasion by exotic ants. They will conduct monthly pitfall sampling at 19 established sites to document changes in ant communities, and test whether changes in response to the hurricane are transient or represent new stable states. They will also assemble a functional trait database for these communities to test whether taxonomic shifts were driven by the filtering of species-specific traits that confer tolerance to flooding. Functional traits of interest include risk-spreading strategies such as polygyny (multiple queens per colony) and polydomy (multiple nesting locations). As the floodwaters have just now receded in the study area, there is an urgent window of opportunity to study the dynamics of ecological response and recovery.

极端天气事件，如灾难性的火灾或洪水，预计在全球环境变化下变得更有可能发生。对于这种极端事件如何影响动植物的数量，包括传粉者或入侵害虫等影响人类福祉的物种，科学家们了解得相对较少。要提高这种科学认识，我们需要从自然灾害中吸取教训。该项目研究了2017年8月与飓风哈维相关的极端洪水如何影响德克萨斯州东部大锡克特地区蚂蚁的数量和群落组成。该地区有数十种本地蚂蚁物种，它们提供有价值的生态系统服务，如分解和虫害控制，以及有毒的入侵物种(火蚁和黄褐色疯狂蚂蚁)。研究人员将使用“之前”和“之后”样本来检验这样一种假设，即飓风哈维扰乱了德克萨斯州东部的蚂蚁群落，有利于入侵蚂蚁数量和程度的增加。这项研究将与国家公园管理局协调进行，国家公园管理局希望了解更多关于飓风哈维的生态影响。科学家们将在德克萨斯州的休斯敦和博蒙特社区向公众公布他们的结果，这两个社区受到火蚁的影响，并受到哈维洪水的强烈影响。生态学理论表明，群落中物种的相对丰富甚至存在，可能既受到与罕见事件相关的历史偶发事件的影响，也受到平均环境条件的影响。对21世纪环境变化的预测包括极端事件频率的增加，生态学家越来越多地被要求预测其后果。研究人员将研究与飓风哈维有关的1000年洪水如何改变大针叶蚁群落的分类和功能特征组成。研究人员将利用三年的事前采样来对比哈维洪水前后蚂蚁群落的丰富度、多样性和物种组成。重要的是，活动前的工作表明，外来蚂蚁物种已经开始渗透到完好的本土社区。研究人员将评估飓风哈维是否增加了外来蚂蚁入侵的机会。他们将在19个既定地点进行每月陷阱抽样，以记录蚂蚁群落的变化，并测试应对飓风的变化是暂时的还是代表新的稳定状态。他们还将为这些群落组装一个功能特征数据库，以测试分类转变是否由对洪水耐受性的物种特有特征的筛选所驱动。令人感兴趣的功能特征包括风险传播策略，如一夫多妻制(每个殖民地有多个女王)和多夫多妻制(多个筑巢地点)。由于研究区的洪水刚刚退去，研究生态响应和恢复的动态是一个紧迫的机会之窗。