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

重大天气事件可能对人口产生长期影响，但由于恶劣天气的短暂性，这些影响可能难以衡量。哈维飓风提供了一个机会，可以精确测试人口如何应对极端天气。这项研究专门着眼于如何个人的一个共同的蚂蚁物种谁是重新繁殖的地区的行为。由于最近的气候模型预测严重风暴将变得更加普遍，了解这些事件如何影响暴露于它们的本地物种的种群对于了解植物和动物生存的未来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护战略，并保护脆弱物种和生境。该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，以帮助解释动物如何应对极端天气事件。它还为将分发给德克萨斯州农村学校的实践活动和课程计划提供了基础，包括与科哈马-库沙塔部落公民有关的学校。最后，该项目的研究人员强烈承诺招募代表性不足的少数民族参与这项工作。分散并成功殖民新栖息地的能力取决于分散者的表型和生活史特征。在动物种群中，空间利用和范围扩张的模式是固有的行为过程。因此，许多动物表现出不同的形态和行为多态性与扩散和范围扩张。然而，很少有研究集中在当地灭绝事件后，在人口的本地范围内，尽管对人口的长期影响的潜力的模式。这项研究利用哈维飓风造成的独特情况，询问原生、受干扰栖息地的再殖民者是否具有预测会促进新的非原生栖息地殖民化的行为特征。 使用蚂蚁属Temnothorax，本研究跟踪的风险耐受性和生活史表型的殖民地colonizing大灌木丛国家保护区在得克萨斯州东部的哈维飓风洪水造成的局部灭绝事件后。这是通过用标准化的侵略测定法跟踪洪水后重建的菌落的风险耐受性来完成的。此外，殖民地保持在共同的花园条件下的一个生殖周期，以衡量能源分配对生殖和体细胞的维护;生活史策略的代理。这项研究提供了重要的洞察作用干扰在维持行为的变化，从而人口的能力，灭绝事件后的灭绝。

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.