RAPID: The role of disturbance in maintaining behavioral variation in native species

RAPID：干扰在维持本地物种行为变异中的作用

• 批准号: 1812644
• 负责人: Sarah Bengston
• 金额: $ 6.96万
• 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: 2018-01-15 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1812644&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; role; disturbance; maintaining; behavioral

Significant weather events may have long-term effects on populations, but these effects can be difficult to measure due to the ephemeral nature of severe weather. Hurricane Harvey has provided the opportunity to precisely test how populations respond to extreme weather. This study specifically looks at how individuals of a common ant species who are repopulating decimated areas behave. Because recent climate models predict severe storms will become more common, understanding how these events affect the populations of native species exposed to them will become increasingly important to understanding the future trajectory of plant and animal survival and the population health of important species. This knowledge can be used to shape effective conservation and preservation strategies and to protect vulnerable species and habitat. This project leverages the existing interest the public has in how ants respond to flooding, such as fire ant rafting, to help explain how animals respond to extreme weather events. It also provides a foundation for hands-on activities and lesson plans to be distributed to rural Texas schools, including schools associated with citizens of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe. Last, the researchers on this project have a strong commitment to recruiting underrepresented minorities to participate in this work.The ability to disperse to and successfully colonize new habitats is predicated on a disperser's phenotypic and life history traits. In animal populations, patterns of space use and range expansion are inherently behavioral processes. As such, many animals exhibit distinct morphological and behavioral polymorphisms associated with dispersal and range expansion. However, few studies have focused on patterns of recolonization in populations' native ranges after local extinction events, despite the potential for long-term effects on population demography. This study leverages the unique circumstances created by Hurricane Harvey to ask whether re-colonizers of native, disturbed habitat bear behavioral traits predicted to promote colonization in new, non-native habitats. Using ants of the genus Temnothorax, this study tracks the risk-tolerance and life-history phenotype of colonies recolonizing Big Thicket National Preserve in Eastern Texas after the local extinction event caused by Hurricane Harvey flooding. This is done by tracking the risk-tolerance of colonies re-establishing following floods with a standardized aggression assay. Additionally, colonies are kept in common garden conditions for one reproductive cycle to measure energetic allocation toward reproductive and somatic maintenance; a proxy for life-history strategy. This research provides significant insight into the role disturbance has in maintaining behavioral variation and thus a population's ability to recolonize after an extinction event.

重大天气事件可能会对人口产生长期影响，但由于恶劣天气的短暂性质，这些影响可能很难衡量。飓风哈维提供了精确测试人们如何应对极端天气的机会。这项研究特别关注了一种常见蚂蚁物种的个体在重新繁衍被灭绝地区的行为。由于最近的气候模型预测，严重的风暴将变得更加常见，因此了解这些事件如何影响暴露在风暴中的本地物种的数量，对于了解动植物未来的生存轨迹以及重要物种的种群健康将变得越来越重要。这些知识可用于制定有效的养护和保存战略，保护易受伤害的物种和栖息地。这个项目利用公众对蚂蚁如何应对洪水的现有兴趣，例如火蚁漂流，帮助解释动物如何应对极端天气事件。它还为实践活动和分发给德克萨斯州农村学校的教案提供了基础，包括与阿拉巴马州-库沙塔部落公民有关的学校。最后，该项目的研究人员强烈致力于招募代表性不足的少数民族参与这项工作。分散到新栖息地并成功殖民的能力取决于分散者的表型和生活史特征。在动物种群中，空间使用和范围扩展的模式本质上是行为过程。因此，许多动物表现出与扩散和范围扩大相关的明显的形态和行为多态。然而，很少有研究集中于局部灭绝事件后种群原生范围内的重新殖民化模式，尽管这可能对人口统计学产生长期影响。这项研究利用飓风哈维造成的独特情况，询问原生、受干扰栖息地的重新殖民者是否具有预测的行为特征，以促进在新的、非原生栖息地的殖民。使用坦诺胸蚁属蚂蚁，这项研究跟踪了飓风哈维洪水造成的局部灭绝事件后，德克萨斯州东部大锡克特国家保护区重新克隆的蚁群的风险耐受性和生活史表型。这是通过用标准化的攻击测试跟踪洪水后重建的殖民地的风险容忍度来实现的。此外，蜂群在一个生殖周期内保持在普通花园的条件下，以衡量生殖和躯体维持的能量分配；这是生活史策略的代表。这项研究对干扰在维持行为变异中所起的作用以及种群在灭绝事件后重新定居的能力提供了重要的洞察。